Titus gave his grandfather a queer look. Then after a long silence he said, strangely, “Y-you don’t mean it?”
“But I do.”
The boy was overcome, and turning round in his chair he laid his head on his arm. To have pigeons—to have a loft like Charlie Brown’s—to see his very own birds strutting about in it, to buy and sell and bargain in the way so dear to boyish hearts.
“Grandfather,” he said after a time, and now he was so much moved that he did not stutter, “I’m not just the same as when I went into the hospital.”
“Indeed!” said his grandfather, kindly.
“No, sir. I thought,” and he pointed a finger at the princess, “that I’d raise and sell her, but now I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“I will tell you,” said his grandfather, very kindly and very seriously, “your hard lesson has taught you that a boy is not all legs, stomach, and brain. He has also a heart.”