II A Young Citizen of the World

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He had been in London more than once before, but not to the lodgings in Philibert Place. When he was brought a second or third time to a town or city, he always knew that the house he was taken to would be in a quarter new to him, and he should not see again the people he had seen before. Such slight links of acquaintance as sometimes formed themselves between him and other children as shabby and poor as himself were easily broken. His father, however, had never forbidden him to make chance acquaintances. He had, in fact, told him that he had reasons for not wishing him to hold himself aloof from other boys. The only barrier which must exist between them must be the barrier of silence concerning his wanderings from country to country. Other boys as poor as he was did not make constant journeys, therefore they would miss nothing from his boyish talk when he omitted all mention of his. When he was in Russia, he must speak only of Russian places and Russian people and customs. When he was in France, Germany, Austria, or England, he must do the same thing. When he had learned English, French, German, Italian, and Russian he did not know. He had seemed to grow up in the midst of changing tongues which all seemed familiar to him, as languages are familiar to children who have lived with them until one scarcely seems less familiar than another. He did remember, however, that his father had always been unswerving in his attention to his pronunciation and method of speaking the language of any country they chanced to be living in.

``You must not seem a foreigner in any country,'' he had said to him. ``It is necessary that you should not. But when you are in England, you must not know French, or German, or anything but English.''

Once, when he was seven or eight years old, a boy had asked him what his father's work was.

``His own father is a carpenter, and he asked me if my father was one,'' Marco brought the story to Loristan. ``I said you were not. Then he asked if you were a shoemaker, and another one said you might be a bricklayer or a tailor--and I didn't know what to tell them.'' He had been out playing in a London street, and he put a grubby little hand on his father's arm, and clutched and almost fiercely shook it. ``I wanted to say that you were not like their fathers, not at all. I knew you were not, though you were quite as poor. You are not a bricklayer or a shoemaker, but a patriot--you could not be only a bricklayer--you!'' He said it grandly and with a queer indignation, his black head held up and his eyes angry.

Loristan laid his hand against his mouth.

``Hush! hush!'' he said. ``Is it an insult to a man to think he may be a carpenter or make a good suit of clothes? If I could make our clothes, we should go better dressed. If I were a shoemaker, your toes would not be making their way into the world as they are now.'' He was smiling, but Marco saw his head held itself high, too, and his eyes were glowing as he touched his shoulder. ``I know you did not tell them I was a patriot,'' he ended. ``What was it you said to them?''