"Suydam," she called out to her coachman with a voice that had the faded sweetness of faded rose leaves, "did you notice that remarkable boy? He looked as though he would have liked to drive with me out into the country. I wish I had invited him to do so."
A milk cart followed with a great noise of tin cans. With milk carts Webster felt somewhat at home: it was often his business to receive the family milk. As the cart was passing, he motioned for the milkman to stop. Perhaps all milkmen stop at any sign: there may be an order: Webster called out with a good deal of hesitation:
"Do you know of a woods further out full of bushes and thickets?"
The milkman gave a little flap of the rein to his horse:
"What's the matter with _you_?" he said with patient forbearance:
Finally Webster saw creeping down the turnpike toward him an empty wagon-bed drawn by a yoke of oxen. A good-natured young negro man sat sideways on the wagon-tongue, smoking. Webster halted him by a gesture and a voice of command:
"Do you know of a bushy woods further out?"
Any negro enjoys being questioned because he enjoys not answering questions. Most of all he enjoys any puzzling exercise of his mother wit.
The negro hesitated: "there's a bushy woods about four miles out."
"On the pike! Did you ever see a bushy woods on the pike? It's _beside_ the pike."
"Depends which way you're going. Right side if you are going out, left side if you're coming in."
"You pass the three mile post and then you go a little further."
"Birds? There's owls in it. There's coons in it."
"Do you know a young canebrake when you see one?"
"I know an old hempbrake when I see one."
Webster enjoyed his new authority in holding up his negro and questioning him about a forest. And it seemed to him that the moment had come when it was right to use money if you had it, horns or no horns. He pulled out a dime. The negro, too surprised to speak, came across and received it. He declined to express thanks but felt disposed to show that he had earned the money by repeating a piece of information:
"No, I don't live in it: I live in a house."
He had retaken his seat on the wagon-tongue.
"What kind of pipe stem is that you are using?"
"Where did I get it? I got it in the woods."