"His shoes were some muddy, and I guessed that he had been where of late he'd spent as much time as he could spare, both when he was in the village and when he was over to Indian Mound. Without digging down into his eyes, the same as some do to folks that's in trouble, I had sensed that there had come down on him everybody's hour of cutting something out of life, which is as elemental a thing to do as dying is, and I donno but it's the same kind as dying is besides. And he had been taking his hour in the elemental way, wanting to be alone and to kind of get near to the earth. I mean tramping the hills, ploughing along the narrow paths close to the barb' wire fences, plunging into the little groves. The little groves have such an' I-know look of understanding all about any difficulty till you walk inside of them, when all to once they stop seeming to know about your special trouble and begin another kind of slow soothing, same as summing things up will soothe you, now and then. "Chris chattered to him, lovable. "'I had some peppermenges,' he says, 'and I like hot ice-cream, too. Don't you? Can you make that?' he inquires, slipping his hand in Insley's. "Of course this made a pang--when you're hurt, 'most everything makes a pang. And this must of brought back that one evening with Robin that he would have to remember, and all the little stupid jokes they'd had that night must of rose up and hit at him, with the awful power of the little things that don't matter one bit and yet that matter everything. "'What can _you_ make, Chris?' Insley says to him. 'Can you make candy? And pull it--like this?' "'Once a lady stirred me some an' cut it up in squares,' Chris explained, 'but I never did make any. My mama couldn't make candy, I guess, but she could make all other things--pancakes an' mittens an' nice stove fires my mama could make. The bag we got the salt in--she made me two handkerchiefs out of that bag,' he ended proudly. "'Did she--did she?' Insley tempted him on. "'Yes,' Chris went on, hopping beside him, 'but now I've got to hurry an' be a man, 'cause litty boys ain't very good things. Can you make po'try?' he wound up. "'Why, Chris--can you?' Insley asked. "'Well, when I was comin' along with my daddy that night I made one,' the child says. And when Insley questions him a little he got this much more out of him. 'It started, "Look at the trees so green an' fair,"' he says, 'but I forget the rest.' "'Do you want to be a poet when you grow up?' Insley ask' him. "'Yes, I do,' the child says ready. 'I think I'll be that first an' then I'll be the President, too. But what I'd rather be is the sprinkler-cart man, wouldn't you?' "'Conceivably,' Insley says, and by the look on his face I bet his hand tightened up on the child's hand. "'At Sodality,' I says, 'he just told them he was going to drive loads of hay. He's made several selections.'