"'Course, there's you an' Miss Holbrook, always askin' an' sendin' things—but that ain't so strange, 'cause you was 'specially his friends. But it's them others what beats me. Why, some days it's 'most ev'ry soul I meet, jest askin' how he is, an' sayin' they hopes he'll git well. Sometimes it's kids that he's played to, an' I'll be triggered if one of 'em one day didn't have no excuse to offer except that David had fit him—'bout a cat, or somethin'—an' that ever since then he'd thought a heap of him—though he guessed David didn't know it. Listen ter that, will ye!
"An' once a woman held me up, an' took on turrible, but all I could git from her was that he'd sat on her doorstep an' played ter her baby once or twice;—as if that was anythin'! But one of the derndest funny ones was the woman who said she could wash her dishes a sight easier after she'd a-seen him go by playin'. There was Bill Dowd, too. You know he really HAS got a screw loose in his head somewheres, an' there ain't any one but what says he's the town fool, all right. Well, what do ye think HE said?"
Mr. Jack shook his head.
"Well, he said he did hope as how nothin' would happen ter that boy cause he did so like ter see him smile, an' that he always did smile every time he met him! There, what do ye think o' that?"
"Well, I think, Perry," returned Mr. Jack soberly, "that Bill Dowd wasn't playing the fool, when he said that, quite so much as he sometimes is, perhaps."
"Hm-m, maybe not," murmured Perry Larson perplexedly. "Still, I'm free ter say I do think 't was kind o' queer." He paused, then slapped his knee suddenly. "Say, did I tell ye about Streeter—Old Bill Streeter an' the pear tree?"
Again Mr. Jack shook his head.
"Well, then, I'm goin' to," declared the other, with gleeful emphasis. "An', say, I don't believe even YOU can explain this—I don't! Well, you know Streeter—ev'ry one does, so I ain't sayin' nothin' sland'rous. He was cut on a bias, an' that bias runs ter money every time. You know as well as I do that he won't lift his finger unless there's a dollar stickin' to it, an' that he hain't no use fur anythin' nor anybody unless there's money in it for him. I'm blamed if I don't think that if he ever gits ter heaven, he'll pluck his own wings an' sell the feathers fur what they'll bring."
"Oh, Perry!" remonstrated Mr. Jack, in a half-stifled voice.
Perry Larson only grinned and went on imperturbably.