"Gee," said Bobby, "wish I knowed where that there place was. I'd get
me enough of them there jewel things to swap for a autermobile an'
a--an' a flyin' machine."
"If you keep your eyes open, Bobby," answered the old basket maker,
"you will find the place all right. Only," he added, looking away
toward the big house on the hill, "you must be very careful not to make
the mistake that the princess lady is making--I mean," he corrected
himself with a smile, "you must be careful not to pick up only the
bright and shiny pebbles as the princess in the story did."
"Huh--I guess I'd know better'n that," retorted the boy. "Come on, Mag,
we gotter go."
"You will come to see me again, won't you?" asked the Interpreter, as
the children stood on the threshold. "You have legs, you know, that can
easily bring you."
"Yer bet we'll come," said Bobby, "won't we, Mag?"
The little girl, looking back at the man in the wheel chair, smiled.
* * * * *
For some time after the children had gone the Interpreter sat very
still. His dark eyes were fixed upon the Mill with its tall, grim
stacks and the columns of smoke that twisted upward to form that
overshadowing cloud. The voices of the children, as they started down
the stairway to the dusty road and to their wretched home in the Flats,
came to him muffled and indistinct from under the cliff.
Perhaps the man in the wheel chair was thinking of the days when
Maggie's princess lady was a little girl and lived in the old house
next door to Mary and Charlie Martin. Perhaps his mind still dwelt on
the fairy story and the princess who found her jewel of happiness. It
may have been that he was listening to the droning, moaning voice of
the Mill, as one listens to the distant roar of the surf on a dangerous
coast.
With a weary movement he took the unfinished basket from the table and
began to work. But it was not his basket making that caused the
weariness of the Interpreter--it was not his work that put the light of
sorrow in his dark eyes.
* * * * *
As Bobby and Maggie went leisurely down the zigzag steps, proud of
the tremendous success of their adventure, the boy paused several times
to execute an inspirational "stunt" that would in some degree express
his triumphant emotions.
"Gee!" he exulted. "Wait 'til I see Skinny and Chuck an' the rest of
the gang! Gee, won't I tell 'em! Just yer wait. I'll knock 'em dead.
Gee!"
On the bottom step they deliberately seated themselves as if they had
suddenly found the duty of leaving the charmed vicinity of that hut on
the cliff above impossible.
Suddenly, from around the curve in the road followed by a whirling
cloud of dust, came an automobile. It was a big car, very imposing with
its shiny black body, its gleaming metal, and its liveried chauffeur.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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