“Mother,” said Dick, “did you never think as you’d like to try staying still in one place and getting a little bit of a home?”
“No, Dick,” said the woman, hastily; “don’t ask me--I couldn’t do it. It would kill me if I were made to try.”
“No one ain’t agoing to make you,” said Dick, soothingly; “but look here, mother--now tell me, didn’t you ever try?”
“Oh yes, I’ve tried--tried hard enough--till I was nigh dead of it----”
“It was before your time,” she said, with a sigh and uneasy movement--“before you were born.”
Dick did not put any further questions. He had never asked anything about his father. A tramp’s life has its lessons as well as a lord’s, and Dick was aware that it was not always expedient to inquire into the life, either public or private, of your predecessors. He had not the least notion that there had been anything particular about his father, but took it for granted that he must have been such a one as Joe or Jack, in rough coat and knotted handkerchief, a wanderer like the rest. He accepted the facts of existence as they stood without making any difficulties, and therefore he did not attempt to “worrit” his mother by further reference to the past, which evidently did “worrit” her. “Well, never mind that,” he said; “you shan’t never be forced to anything if I can help it. But if so be as I got work, and it was for my good to stay in a place--supposing it might be here?”
“Here’s different,” said his mother, dreamily.
“That’s just what I think,” cried Dick, too wise to ask why; “it’s a kind of a place where a body feels free like, where you can be gone to-morrow if you please--the forest handy and Ascot handy, and barges as will give you a lift the moment as you feel it the right thing to go. That’s just what I wanted to ask you, mother. If I got a spell of work along of that young swell as I’m going to see, or anything steady, mightn’t we try? If you felt on the go any day, you might just take the road again and no harm done; or if you felt as you could sit still and make yourself comfortable in the house----”
“I could never sit still and make myself comfortable,” she said; “I can’t be happy out of the air, Dick--I can’t breathe; and sitting still was never my way--nor you couldn’t do it neither,” she added, looking in his face.