They were good jokes too, full of real Irish wit, and long before the set was ready for action the boys had become fond of the old fellow.
“He’s a dead game sport,” Joe said to Bob, in that brief interval when they had raced home for lunch. “I bet I’d be a regular old crab, blind like that.”
Mrs. Layton put up an appetizing lunch for the blind man, topping it off with a delicious homemade lemon pie and a thermos bottle full of steaming coffee.
The way the old man ate that food was amazing even to Jimmy. Maggie was too busy earning enough to keep them alive to bother much with dainties. At any rate, Adam ate the entire lemon pie, not leaving so much as a crumb.
“I thought I was pretty good on feeding,” whispered Joe, in a delighted aside, “but I never could go that old bird. He’s got me beat a mile.”
“Well,” said Jimmy complacently, “I bet I’d tie with him.”
If the boys had wanted any reward for that day of strenuous work, they would have had it when, placing the earphones upon his white head, they watched the expression of McNulty’s face change from mystification to wonder, then to beatific enjoyment.
He listened motionless while the exquisite music flooded his starved old soul. Toward the end he closed his eyes and tears trickled from beneath the lids down his wrinkled face. He brushed them off impatiently and the boys noticed that his hand was trembling.
It was a long, long time before he seemed to be aware that there was any one in the room with him. He seemed to have completely forgotten the boys who had bestowed this rare gift upon him.
After a while, coming out of his dream, the old man began fumbling with the headphones as if he wanted to take them off, and Bob helped him. The man tried to speak, but made hard work of it. Emotion choked him.