“What sayest now, little baron?” asked the learned Barrel Brow, while his face was wreathed in a smile of triumph; “dost think thou wouldst be as good a man as this Soodopsy?”
“Nay, indeed I do not, wise Master,” wrote I upon my silver tablet; “and I thank thee for all thou has told me and taught me, and I ask leave, O Barrel Brow, to come again and converse with thee.”
“That thou mayest, little baron,” traced the learned Soodopsy upon his silver tablet; and then as I turned to leave his chamber he reached quickly after me and touched me with a bent forefinger, which meant return.
“Thy pardon, little baron,” he wrote, “but thou art leaving my study without thy faithful Bulger; am I not right?”
I was astounded, for indeed he was right, and though without the sense of sight he had seen more than I with two good eyes wide open. There lay Bulger fast asleep on a silken-covered hassock.
Our silent conversation had so wearied him that he had sailed off into the Land of Nod on the wings of a dream.
He hung his head and looked very shame-faced when my call aroused him and he discovered that I had actually reached the doorway without his knowing it.
CHAPTER XIX
BEGINS WITH SOMETHING ABOUT THE LITTLE SOODOPSIES, BUT BRANCHES OFF ON ANOTHER SUBJECT; TO WIT;—THE SILENT SONG OF SINGING FINGERS, THE FAIR MAID OF THE CITY OF SILVER.—BARREL BROW IS KIND ENOUGH TO ENLIGHTEN ME ON A CERTAIN POINT, AND HE TAKES OCCASION TO PAY BULGER A VERY HIGH COMPLIMENT, WHICH, OF COURSE, HE DESERVED.
The longer I stayed among the Soodopsies the more did I become convinced that they were the happiest, the lightest hearted, the most contented human beings that I had met in all my travels. If it were possible for the links of a long chain suspended over a chasm to be living, thinking beings for a short while, it seems to me they would hang together in the most perfect accord, for each link would discover that he was no better than his neighbor, and that the welfare of all the other links depended upon him and his upon theirs. So it was with the Formifolk, having no sense of sight they knew no such thing as envy, and all hands were alike when reached out for a greeting.