Bob went to the McNulty cabin, buried in the most squalid district of the town, bearing a message from his mother. When he got there he found that Mr. McNulty was the only one at home.
The old fellow, smoking a black pipe in the bare kitchen of the house, seemed so pathetically glad to see some one—or, rather, to hear some one—that Bob yielded to his invitation to sit down and talk to him.
And, someway, even after Bob reached home, he could not shake off the memory of the lonesome old blind man with nothing to do all day long but sit in a chair smoking his pipe, waiting for some chance word from a passer-by.
It did not seem fair that he, Bob, should have all the good things of life while that old man should have nothing—nothing, at all.
He spoke to his chums about it, but, though they were sympathetic, they did not see anything they could do.
“We can’t give him back his eyesight, you know,” said Joe absently, already deep in a new scheme of improvement for the set.
“No,” said Bob. “But we might give him something that would do nearly as well.”
“What do you mean?” they asked, puzzled.
“Radio,” said Bob, and laid his hand lovingly on the apparatus. “If it means a lot to us, just think how much more it would mean to some one who hasn’t a thing to do all day but sit and think. Why, I don’t suppose any of us who can see can begin to realize what it would mean not to be able even to read the daily newspaper.”
The others stared at Bob, and slowly his meaning sank home.