"It was you I heard a-singin'--jest as dawn broke!" He
scratched his head again. "And me thinkin' all the time it was a
bird!" he added to himself.
The Tramp said nothing.
WEEDEN then resumed his ordinary manner; he went on speaking as
before. But obviously--somewhere deep down inside himself--he had come
to a big decision.
"Gettin' nearer and nearer," he resumed his former conversation
exactly where he had left it off, "but never near enough to get
disappointed--ain't it? When you gets to the end of anything, you see,
it's over. And that's a pity."
Uncle Felix glanced at Stumper; Stumper glanced down at the end of his
"wooden" leg; the Tramp still said nothing, smiling in his beard, now
combed out much smoother than before.
"It comes to this," said Weeden, "my way of thinkin' at least." He
scratched wisdom from another corner of his head. "There's a lot of
'iding goin' on, no question about _that_; and the great thing is--my
way of thinkin' at any rate--is--jest to keep on lookin'."
The children met him eagerly at this point, using two favourite words
that Aunt Emily strongly disapproved of: "deslidedly," said one;
"distinkly," exclaimed the other.
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