Helen of the Old House | Page 4

of this man that all else about him was forgotten.
Squaring himself before his host, the boy said, aggressively, "I know who yer are. Yer are the Interpreter. I know 'cause yer ain't got no legs."
"Yes," returned the old basket maker, still smiling, "I am the Interpreter. At least," he continued, "that is what the people call me." Then, as he regarded the general appearance of the children, and noted particularly the tired face and pathetic eyes of the little girl, his smile was lost in a look of brooding sorrow and his deep voice was sad and gentle, as he added, "But some things I find very hard to interpret."
The girl, with a shy smile, went a little nearer.
The boy, with his eyes fixed upon the covering that in spite of the heat of the day hid the man in the wheel chair from his waist down, said with the cruel insistency of childhood, "Ain't yer got no legs--honest, now, ain't yer?"
The Interpreter laughed understandingly. Placing the unfinished basket on a low table that held his tools and the material for his work within reach of his hand, he threw aside the light shawl. "See!" he said.
For a moment the children gazed, breathlessly, at those shrunken and twisted limbs that resembled the limbs of a strong man no more than the empty, flapping sleeves of a scarecrow resemble the arms of a living human body.
"They are legs all right," said the Interpreter, still smiling, "but they're not much good, are they? Do you think you could beat me in a race?"
"Gee!" exclaimed the boy.
Two bright tears rolled down the thin, dirty cheeks of the little girl's tired face, and she turned to look away over the dirty Flats, the smoke-grimed mills, and the golden fields of grain in the sunshiny valley, to something that she seemed to see in the far distant sky.
With a quick movement the Interpreter again hid his useless limbs.
"And now don't you think you might tell me about yourselves? What is your name, my boy?"
"I'm Bobby Whaley," answered the lad. "She's my sister, Maggie."
"Oh, yes," said the Interpreter. "Your father is Sam Whaley. He works in the Mill."
"Uh-huh, some of the time he works--when there ain't no strikes ner nothin'."
The Interpreter, with his eyes on that dark cloud that hung above the forest of grim stacks, appeared to attach rather more importance to Bobby's reply than the lad's simple words would justify.
Then, looking gravely at Sam Whaley's son, he said, "And you will work in the Mill, too, I suppose, when you grow up?"
"I dunno," returned the boy. "I ain't much stuck on work. An' dad, he says it don't git yer nothin', nohow."
"I see," mused the Interpreter, and he seemed to see much more than lay on the surface of the child's characteristic expression.
The little girl was still gazing wistfully at the faraway line of hills.
As if struck by a sudden thought, the Interpreter asked, "Your father is working now, though, isn't he?"
"Uh-huh, just now he is."
"I suppose then you are not hungry."
At this wee Maggie turned quickly from contemplating the distant horizon to consider the possible meaning in the man's remark.
For a moment the children looked at each other. Then, as a grin of anticipation spread itself over his freckled face, the boy exclaimed, "Hungry! Gosh! Mister Interpreter, we're allus hungry!"
For the first time the little girl spoke, in a thin, piping voice, "Skinny an' Chuck, they said yer give 'em cookies. Didn't they, Bobby?"
"Uh-huh," agreed Bobby, hopefully.
The man in the wheel chair laughed. "If you go into the house and look in the bottom part of that cupboard near the kitchen door you will find a big jar and--"
But Bobby and Maggie had disappeared.
The children had found the jar in the cupboard and, with their hands and their mouths filled with cookies, were gazing at each other in unbelieving wonder when the sound of a step on the bare floor of the kitchen startled them. One look through the open doorway and they fled with headlong haste back to the porch, where they unhesitatingly sought refuge behind their friend ha the wheel chair.
The object of their fears appeared a short moment behind them.
"Oh," said the Interpreter, reaching out to draw little Maggie within the protecting circle of his arm, "it is Billy Rand. You don't need to fear Billy."
The man who stood looking kindly down upon them was fully as tall and heavy as the Interpreter had been in those years before the accident that condemned him to his chair. But Billy Rand lacked the commanding presence that had once so distinguished his older friend and guardian. His age was somewhere between twenty and thirty; but his face was still the face of an overgrown and rather slow-witted child.
Raising his hands, Billy Rand