Page:Life in the Open Air.djvu/338

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more freckled than his. Indeed, it seems to be a biological fact that the very red-haired and freckled tend to honesty. Nature compensates them by the gift of Worth for the want of Beauty. The brown splashes arranged themselves on this little chap’s face as if each was a little muddy puddle to water the roots of a future hair of his future beard, and a series of them fell away from the bridge of his nose very dark and precisely drawn, and suggesting that his moustache, when it came, would come there instead of under his uplifted nostrils. A merry, trusty, busy fellow he was, and to see him was to like him.

“What is your name, my lad?” asked Brightly.

“Doak, sir. Bevel Doak.”

“And yours,” continued the banker, turning to the other.

“Bozes, sir.”

“Bozes?” repeated Brightly.

“I didn’t say, Bozes, sir. I said Bozes, — Bozes.”

“O Moses! Well, Moses what?”

“Dot Bozes Watt. By dabe is Shacob.”

“Moses Jacob?” says Brightly.

“Shacob Bozes, sir,” replied the boy.

His speech bewrayed him. His name bewrayed him. His nose, his ruddy brown skin, his coarse black hair, his beady black eyes, his glass breast-pin, all bewrayed him.

“A Jew,” thought Brightly, “and a shrewd one. A fellow with such a nose as that must open his way.”