r. Van! Mr. Van!"
He turned quickly. Behind, his new-made acquaintance was making effort to run, but to run and still hold the hand of her father was difficult. With a smile he stopped.
"Oh, Mr. Van!" The words came breathlessly. "I was so afraid we would lose you! Father can't cross quick, and once I couldn't see you. Here he is, Father." She took Van Landing's hand and laid it in her father's. "He can tell by hands," she said, "whether you're a nice person or not. I told him you didn't have anybody, and—"
Van Landing's hand for a moment lay in the stranger's, then he shook the latter's warmly and again raised his hat. In the circle of light caused by the electric lamp near which they stood the blind man's face could be seen distinctly, and in it was that one sees but rarely in the faces of men, and in Van Landing's throat came sudden tightening.
"Oh, sir, I cannot make her understand, cannot keep her from talking to strangers!" The troubled voice was of a strange quality for so shabbily clothed a body, and in the eyes that saw not, and which were lifted to Van Landing's, was sudden terror. "She believes all people to be her friends. I cannot always be with her, and some day—"
"But, Father, you said that whoever didn't have any friends must be our friend, because—because that's all we can be—just friends. And he hasn't any. I mean anybody to make Christmas for. He said so himself. And can't he go with us to-night and see the shops? I know he's nice, Father. Please, please let him!"
The look of terrified helplessness which for a moment swept over the gentle face, wherein suffering and sorrow had made deep impress, but in which was neither bitterness nor complaint, stirred the heart within him as not for long it had been stirred, and quickly Van Landing spoke.
"It may not be a good plan generally, but this time it was all right," he said. "She spoke to me because she thought I could not see what was going on across the street, and very kindly shared her better position with me. I—" He hesitated. His name would mean nothing to the man before him. Their worlds were very different worlds. It was possible, however, that this gentle, shrinking creature, with a face so spiritualized by life's denials that it shamed him as he looked, knew more of his, Van Landing's, world than he of the blind man's, and suddenly, as if something outside himself directed, he yielded to a strange impulse.
It was true, what the child had said. He had few friends—that is, friends in the sense the child meant. Of acquaintances he had many, very many. At his club, in business, in a rather limited social set, he knew a number of people well, but friends—If he were to die to-morrow his going would occasion but the usual comment he had often heard concerning others. Some years ago he had found himself continually entertaining what he called his friends, spending foolish sums of money on costly dinners, and quite suddenly he had quit. As long as he entertained he was entertained in return, and for some time after he stopped he still received invitations of many sorts, but in cynical realization of the unsatisfactoriness of his manner of life he had given it up, and in its place had come nothing to answer the hunger of his heart for comradeship and human cheer. His opinion of life had become unhealthy. As an experience for which one is not primarily responsible it had to be endured, but out of it he had gotten little save what men called success; and that, he had long since found, though sweet in the pursuit, was bitter in achievement if there was no one who cared—and for his nobody really cared. This blind man with the shabby clothes and ill-nourished body was richer than he. He had a child who loved him and whom he loved.
"It is true what your little girl has told you." Van Landing took off his glasses and wiped them. "I have no one to make Christmas for, and if you don't mind I wish you would let me go with you to the shops to-night. I don't know much about Christmas buying. My presents are chiefly given in mon—— I mean I don't know any little children."