"You are looking for work?" questioned McLean.
"Yis," answered Freckles.
"I am very sorry," said the Boss with genuine sympathy in his every
tone, "but there is only one man I want at present--a hardy, big fellow
with a stout heart and a strong body. I hoped that you would do, but I
am afraid you are too young and scarcely strong enough."
Freckles stood, hat in hand, watching McLean.
"And what was it you thought I might be doing?" he asked.
The Boss could scarcely repress a start. Somewhere before accident and
poverty there had been an ancestor who used cultivated English, even
with an accent. The boy spoke in a mellow Irish voice, sweet and pure.
It was scarcely definite enough to be called brogue, yet there was a
trick in the turning of the sentence, the wrong sound of a letter here
and there, that was almost irresistible to McLean, and presaged a misuse
of infinitives and possessives with which he was very familiar and
which touched him nearly. He was of foreign birth, and despite years of
alienation, in times of strong feeling he committed inherited sins of
accent and construction.
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