Rochester watched him curiously for a few seconds.
“Look here,” he said, “I will make a bargain with you. You shall have the free run of all my lands for as long as you like, and in return you shall just answer me one question.”
The boy turned his head slightly.
“The question?” he asked.
“You shall tell me the things which you see down there,” Rochester declared, holding his hand straight out in front of him, pointing downward toward the half-hidden panorama.
The boy shook his head.
“For other people they would not count,” he said. “They are for myself only. What I see would be invisible to you.”
“A matter of eyesight?” Rochester asked, with raised eyebrows.
“Of imagination,” the boy answered. “There is no necessity for you to look outside your own immediate surroundings to see beautiful things, unless you choose deliberately to make your life an ugly thing. With us it is different—with us who work for a living, who dwell in the cities, and who have no power to push back the wheels of life. If we are presumptuous enough to wish to take into our lives anything of the beautiful, anything to help us fight our daily battle against the commonplace, we have to create it for ourselves. That is why I am here just now, and why I was regretting, when I heard your footstep, that one finds it so hard to be alone.”