"
"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.
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