'We don’t take children under six,' he had said to Stanislaus’s father when the latter had brought him to Lomax, 'and your little boy doesn’t look five yet.'
'He’ll be five the twenty-second of March,' the father said.
'I’ll be five ve twenty-second of March,' Stanislaus echoed.
He was sitting holding his cap politely between his knees, swinging his fat legs with a gay serenity, while his blind eyes stared away into the dark. He had not been paying much attention to the conversation, being occupied with the working out of a little silent bit of rhythm by an elaborate system of leg-swings: twice out with the right foot; twice with the left; then twice together. He had found that swinging his legs helped to pass the time when grown-ups were talking. The mention of his birthday, however, brought him at once to the surface. That was because Mr. Grey had told him of a wonderful thing which would happen the day he was five. Thereafter his legs swung to the accompaniment of a happy unheard chant:—
'I’ll be five years old' (right leg out),
'I’ll be five years old' (left leg out),
'I’ll be five years old on my birf-day!'
(Both legs in ecstatic conjunction.)
Stanislaus’s father, a sad-eyed man, who, though he spoke with no accent, was evidently of emigrant extraction, looked troubled.
'My wife’s dead,' he said, 'an’ I’m workin’ in the coalmines, an’ you know that ain’t no place for a little blind child. Every one told me sure you’d take him here.'
Mr. Lincoln hesitated. 'Well,' he said at length, 'I’ll send for Miss Lyman,—she’s the matron for the blind boys,—and if she consents to take him, I’ll make no objection.'
Miss Lyman appeared presently, and Mr. Lincoln explained the situation.