Helen of the Old House

ers fields_."No well informed resident of Millsburgh, when referring to the principal industry of his little manufacturing city, ever says "the mills"--it is always "the Mill."The reason

ed 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 talked to the Interpreter in the sign language of the deaf and dumb. The Interpreter replied in the same manner and, with a smiling nod to the children, Billy returned to the garden in the rear of the house.Tiny Maggie's eyes were big with wonder."Gee!" breathed Bobby. "He sure enough can't talk, can he?""No," returned the Interpreter. "Poor Billy has never spoken a word.""Gee!" said Bobby again. "An' can't he hear nothin,' neither?""No, Bobby, he has never heard a sound."Too awe-stricken even to repeat his favorite exclamation, the boy munched his cooky in silence, while Maggie, enjoying her share of the old basket maker's hospitality, snuggled a little closer to the wheel of the big chair."Billy Rand, you see," explained the Interpreter, "is my legs."Bobby laughed. "Funny legs, I'd say.""Yes," agreed the Interpreter, "but very good legs just the same. Billy runs all sorts of errands for me--goes to town to sell our baskets and to bring home our groceries, helps about the house and does many things that I can't do. He is hoeing the garden this afternoon. He comes in every once in a while to ask if I want anything. He sleeps in a little room next to mine and sometimes in the night, when I am not resting well, I hear him come to my bedside to see if I am all right.""An' yer keep him an' take care of him?" asked Bobby."Yes," returned the Interpreter, "I take care of Billy and Billy takes care of me. He has fine legs but not much of a--but cannot speak or hear. I can talk and hear and think but have no legs. So with my reasonably good head and his very good legs we make a fairly good man, you see."Bobby laughed aloud and even wee Maggie chuckled at the Interpreter's quaint explanation of himself and Billy Rand."Funny kind of a man," said Bobby."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'!"From his wheel chair the Interpreter watched the children at the porch railing. "Of course you would see your home," he said, gravely. "The Mill first, and then the place where you live. Nearly every one sees those things first. Now tell what else you see.""I see, I see--" The boy hesitated. There was so much to be seen from the Interpreter's balcony porch.The little girl's thin voice piped up with shrill eagerness, "Look at the pretty yeller fields an' the green trees away over there across the river, Bobby. Gee, but wouldn't yer just love to be over there an'--an'--roll 'round in the grass, an' pick flowers, an' everything?""Huh," retorted Bobby. "Look-ee, that there's McIver's factory up the river there. It's 'most as big as the Mill. An' see all the stores an' barber shops an' things downtown--an' look-ee, there's the courthouse where the jail is an'--"Maggie chimed in with, "An' all the steeples of the churches--an' everythin'.""An' right down there," continued the boy, pointing more toward the east where, at the edge of the Flats, the ground begins to rise toward the higher slope of the hills, "in that there bunch of trees is where Pete Martin lives, an' Mary an' Captain Charlie. Look-ee, Mag, yer can see the little white house a-showin' through the green leaves.""You know the Martins, do you?" asked the Interpreter."You bet we do," returned Bobby, without taking his gaze from the scene before him, while Maggie confirmed her brother's words by turning to look shyly at her new-found friend. "Pete and Charlie they work in the Mill. Charlie he was a captain in the war. He's one of the head guys in our union now. Mary she used to give us stuff to eat when dad was a-strikin' the last time.""An' look-ee," continued the boy, "right there next to the Martins' yer can see the old house where Adam Ward used to live before the Mill made him rich an' he moved to his big place up on the hill. I know 'cause I heard dad an' another man talkin' 'bout it onct. Ain't nobody lives in the old house now. She's all tumbled down with windows broke an' everything. I wonder--" He paused to search the hillside to the east. "Yep," he shouted, pointing, "there she is--there's the castle--there's where old Adam an' his folks lives now. Some place to live I'd say. Gee, but wouldn't I like to put a chunk o' danermite er somethin' under there! I'd blow the whole darned thing into nothin' at all an that old devil Adam with it. I'd--"Little Maggie caught her warlike brother's arm. "But, Bobby--Bobby, yer wouldn't dast to do that, yer know yer wouldn't!""Huh," returned the boy, scornfully. "I'd show yer if I had a chanct.""But, Bobby, yer'd maybe kill the beautiful princess lady if yer was to blow up the castle an' every-thin'.""Aw shucks," returned the boy, shaking off his sister's hand with manly impatience. "Couldn't I wait 'til she was away somewheres else 'fore I touched it off? An', anyway, what if yer wonderful princess lady _was_ to git hurt, I guess she's one of 'em