"'Cripple?' says Mis' Cadoza, in her kind of undressed voice. 'No. He fell in a tub of hot water years ago, and his left leg is witherin' up.' "'Let me see it,' says Insley, and pulled the covers back without waiting. "There ain't nothing more wonderful than a strong, capable, quick human hand doing something it knows how to do. Insley's hands touched over the poor little leg of the child until I expected to see it get well right there under his fingers. He felt the cords of the knee and then looked up at the mother. "'Haven't they told you,' he says, 'that if he has an operation on his knee, you can have a chance at saving the leg? I knew a case very like this where the leg was saved.' "'I ain't been to see nobody about it,' says Mis' Cadoza, leaving her mouth open afterwards, like she does. 'What's the good? I can't pay for no operation on him. I got all I can do to keep 'm alive.' "Eph moved a little, and something fell down on the floor. Mis' Cadoza pounced on it. "'Ain't I forbid you?' she says, angry, and held out to us what she'd picked up--a little dab of wet earth. 'He digs up all my house plants,' she scolds, like some sort of machinery grating down on one place continual, 'an' he hauls the dirt out and lays there an' makes _figgers_. The idear! Gettin' the sheets a sight....' "The child looked over at us, defiant. He spoke for the first time, and I was surprised to hear how kind of grown-up his voice was. "'I can get 'em to look like faces,' he says. 'I don't care what _she_ says.' "'Show us,' commands Insley. "He got back the bit of earth from Mis' Cadoza, and found a paper for the crumbs, and pillowed the boy up and sat beside him. The thin, dirty little hands went to work as eager as birds pecking, and on the earth that he packed in his palm he made, with his thumb nail and a pen handle from under his pillow, a face--a boy's face, that had in it something that looked at you. 'But I can never get 'em to look the same way two times,' he says to us, shy. "'He's most killed my Lady Washington geranium draggin' the clay out from under the roots,' Mis' Cadoza put in, resentful. "Insley sort of sweeps around and looks acrost at her, deep and gentle, and like he understood about her boy and her geranium considerable better than she did. "'He won't do it any more,' he says. 'He'll have something better.' "The boy looked up at him. 'What?' he asks. "'Clay,' says Insley, 'in a box. With things for you to make the clay like. Do you want that?' "The boy kind of curled down in his pillow and come as near to shuffling as he could in the bed, and he hadn't an idea what to say. But I tell you, his eyes, they wasn't like any trapped thing any more; they was regular _boy's_ eyes, lit up about something. "'Mrs. Cadoza,' Insley says, 'will you do something for me? We're trying to get together a little shrubbery, over at the college. May I come in and get some lilac roots from you some day?'