"Ped," said Gardiner, "we don't control the lightnings; and you never can tell where they are going to strike next—or when."
Ludlow flushed a little, and did not look at his friends.
"Wouldn't it be wonderful," he said, "to be loved and to be in love the way his father and mother were. Maybe they were the ones that really heard and saw, and—sang. We admire the lily, but we owe her to the loves of the blind rain for the deaf and the dumb earth…."
Nobody spoke for some moments. It had been the only allusion that Ludlow had made in years and years to that which had left him a lonely and a cynical man.
"I wonder," Pedder mused, "how it ever occurred to a blind, deaf mute that severing his wrist with his teeth would induce death?"
Gardiner shrugged his shoulders.
"It is always interesting," he said, "to know just which part of a story—if any—is thought worthy of consideration by a given individual."
THE BOOT
Mary Rex was more particularly my nurse, for my sister Ellen, a thoughtful, dependable child of eight, was her own mistress in most matters.
This was in the days when we got our servants from neighborhood families; before the Swedish and Irish invasion had made servants of us in turn. Mary was the youngest of an ancestored county family. Her great-grandfather had fought in the Revolution, as you might know by the great flint-lock musket over the Rexes' fireplace. A brother of his had formed part of a British square at Waterloo; and if Mary's own father had not lost his right hand at Gettysburg he would never have let his children go out to service. Poor soul, he bore the whole of his afflictions, those to his body and those to his pride, with a dignity not often seen in these degenerate days. He was by trade a blacksmith, and it was for that reason, I suppose, that Providence, who loves a little joke, elected for amputation his right hand rather than one or both of his feet. Since, even in these degenerate days, many a footless blacksmith makes an honest living.