“Howdy. I’m right thankful to you for coming,” she said. “Jimmy here has been pining for a sight of you. He don’t never get to see much.”
Then Lee saw Jimmy, the prisoner of the old homemade armchair by the window opening. The boy’s limp, twisted legs told why he was a prisoner. The body was undersized, and the face was old with pain, but Jimmy Bobb’s dark blue eyes were eager, interesting eyes.
“You, Mackey,” ordered the woman, “draw out the bench from the shed room. And now, mister,” extending her hand, “lemme rest your hat, and you set and make yourself comfortable.”
When he had first stood on the threshold of this house of poverty, Lee Renaud had thought he was going to be embarrassed with people so different from any he had ever known. But here he found genuine courtesy to set him at ease. More than that, the terrible eagerness in Jimmy Bobb’s eyes turned Lee Renaud’s thoughts entirely away from Lee Renaud. This Jimmy Bobb knew so little, and he wanted to know so much.
“Is it rightly true,” burst from Jimmy before Lee had hardly got settled on the bench, “that you got a whirling glass contraption up at the big house what pulls the lightning right down out of the sky?”
“Well,” Lee tugged at his chin in perplexity. How in Kingdom Come was he, who knew so little about electricity, going to explain it to a fellow who knew even less? “Well,” Lee made another start, “it’s kind of this way. The glass wheel when turned very, very fast between some fur pads, or rubbers, generates a spark of power called electricity. Smart men have proved that this electricity that we generate and the lightning that flashes in the sky are full of the same kind of power. Lightning, you know, shoots through the air in zigzag lines.”
“I know. I’ve watched it often. It goes like this,” and the excited listener made sharp, jerky motions with his hand.
“That’s it. And the electrical discharge from a man-made battery shoots out jagged, too, like the lightning. Lightning strikes the highest pointed objects. Electricity does that too. Lightning sets fire to non-conductors, or rends them in pieces. Lightning destroys animal life when it strikes, and electricity acts just that way—”
“It sounds turrible powerful,” muttered Jimmy Bobb. “What and all you going to do with this here power you are getting out of the air?”
“Nothing in particular,” said Lee ruefully. “I haven’t managed to get any too much of it. But back in the town where I have always lived, there are plenty of folks brainy enough to make electricity do lots of work for them. It makes bright lights and runs telephones and street cars and talking machines—”