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Show 54 spat on it, rubbed it against the front of his ragged shirt, and gazed at it as if the coin were different than anything he had ever seen before, and a bit frightening. I waited while he stared back and forth from me to the coin to the rusted, wood-handled knife. "Well, do you want to or don't you?" I asked, losing patience. The boy jumped to his feet and stood trembling, looking like he wanted to bolt away. He's afraid of me, I thought in surprise. "I'm not going to hurt you," I said. "If you want to sell the knife, give it to me, and if you don't, give me back my money." He threw the knife in the dirt at my feet, then bounded around to the other side of the tree. Maybe he's mute or slow in his wits, I thought as I bent to pick up the worn-out knife. I walked away from him in the direction I had come from and when I had gone about a dozen paces, I heard his little scratchy voice pipe, "Thank you, Sir." Sir! He had called me sir thinking that I was of a higher class than he was. To a poor, ignorant shepherd boy, my fine new clothes and my idleness during the working hours of the day must have marked me as a person well-born. I took no joy from his mistake because even if he didn't know what I was, I did. I could feel his eyes boring into my back, so I broke into a run to get away from him. I had wanted the knife because I thought I'd try to make myself a flute - with a week of idleness ahead of me, I might be able to persuade Gast to teach me to play music. I had never tried to make |
