"Yes," agreed the Interpreter, "but most of us men are funny in one way
or another--aren't we, Maggie?" He looked down into the upturned face
of that tiny wisp of humanity at his side.
Maggie smiled gravely in answer.
Very confident now in his superiority over the Interpreter, whose deaf
and dumb legs were safely out of sight in the garden back of the house,
Bobby finished the last of his cookies, and began to explore.
Accompanying his investigations with a running fire of questions, he
fingered the unfinished basket and the tools and material on the table,
examined the wheel chair, and went from end to end of the balcony
porch. Hanging over the railing, he looked down from every possible
angle upon the rocks, the stairway and the dusty road below.
Exhausting, at last, the possibilities of the immediate vicinity, he
turned his inquiring gaze upon the more distant landscape.
"Gee! Yer can see a lot from here, can't yer?"
"Yes," returned the Interpreter, gravely, "you can certainly see a lot.
And do you know, Bobby, it is strange, but what you see depends almost
wholly on what you are?"
The boy turned his freckled face toward the Interpreter. "Huh?"
"I mean," explained the Interpreter, "that different people see
different things. Some who come to visit me can see nothing but the
Mill over there; some see only the Flats down below; others see the
stores and offices; others look at nothing but the different houses on
the hillsides; still others can see nothing but the farms. It is funny,
but that's the way it is with people, Bobby."
"Aw--what are yer givin' us?" returned Bobby, and, with an unmistakably
superior air, he faced again toward the scene before them. "I can see
the whole darned thing--I can."
The Interpreter laughed. "And that," he said, "is exactly what every
one says, Bobby. But, after all, they don't see the whole darned
thing--they only think they do."
"Huh," retorted the boy, scornfully, "I guess I can see the Mill, can't
I?--over there by the river--with the smoke a-rollin' out of her
chimneys? Listen, I can hear her, too."
Faintly, on a passing breath of air, came the heavy droning, moaning
voice of the Mill.
"Yes," agreed the Interpreter, with an odd note in his deep, kindly
voice, "I can nearly always hear it. I was sure you would see the
Mill."
"An' look-ee, look-ee," shouted the boy, forgetting, in his quick
excitement, to maintain this superior air, "look-ee, Mag! Come here,
quick." With energetic gestures he beckoned his sister to his side.
"Look-ee, right over there by that bunch of dust, see? It's our
house--where we live. That there's Tony's old place on the corner. An'
there's the lot where us kids plays ball. Gee, yer could almost see mom
if she'd only come outside to talk to Missus Grafton er somethin'!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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