"Yes," returned the Interpreter, "I take care of Billy and Billy takes care of me. He has fine legs but not much of a—but cannot speak or hear. I can talk and hear and think but have no legs. So with my reasonably good head and his very good legs we make a fairly good man, you see."
Bobby laughed aloud and even wee Maggie chuckled at the Interpreter's quaint explanation of himself and Billy Rand.
"Funny kind of a man," said Bobby.
"Yes," agreed the Interpreter, "but most of us men are funny in one way or another—aren't we, Maggie?" He looked down into the upturned face of that tiny wisp of humanity at his side.
Maggie smiled gravely in answer.
Very confident now in his superiority over the Interpreter, whose deaf and dumb legs were safely out of sight in the garden back of the house, Bobby finished the last of his cookies, and began to explore. Accompanying his investigations with a running fire of questions, he fingered the unfinished basket and the tools and material on the table, examined the wheel chair, and went from end to end of the balcony porch. Hanging over the railing, he looked down from every possible angle upon the rocks, the stairway and the dusty road below. Exhausting, at last, the possibilities of the immediate vicinity, he turned his inquiring gaze upon the more distant landscape.
"Gee! Yer can see a lot from here, can't yer?"
"Yes," returned the Interpreter, gravely, "you can certainly see a lot. And do you know, Bobby, it is strange, but what you see depends almost wholly on what you are?"
The boy turned his freckled face toward the Interpreter. "Huh?"
"I mean," explained the Interpreter, "that different people see different things. Some who come to visit me can see nothing but the Mill over there; some see only the Flats down below; others see the stores and offices; others look at nothing but the different houses on the hillsides; still others can see nothing but the farms. It is funny, but that's the way it is with people, Bobby."