"Why, clay touched his eyes, common clay—and he saw! You understand: it was just common clay that he had been walking upon, blind as a bat, for all his days. And he saw!"
She saw the parable, grave all at once. "Paul," she said, "I told you a moment ago that you would teach."
"Come on," he shouted, plunging down the hill, "I want to write. Heavens, how I want to write! Ursula, I shall read it to you bit by bit. And you shall paint a picture of it. We'll do it together. 'The Beggar-Man.' Shall we?"
"Rather. Begin to-day. Come and read to me to-night."
"You don't mind?" He stopped again abruptly.
"Mind? Of course not. What a boy!"
"Then we're real friends, are we?"
"Of course," said Ursula. "I saw that last night."
(3)
Thus, veritably, was born "The Beggar-Man." The general public knew nothing of it till the play was staged, more than twelve months later, after the usual intolerable delays and the appearance of the author's second book of verse, and then, for all the interest it aroused in this new author, and for all the heavy bookings, few ever knew the details of its origin and working out. It was, as staged, a children's mystery. They loved the Beggar-Man, and shouted with glee at his gay sallies and his new-born wonderment in wooden stools, his rickety hut and the weeds about his door. They loved his adventure with the King, the stupid old King who was as blind as—as a beggar-man. But grown-up people went, too, and they smiled a little wistfully when the children laughed, and looked a little sadly at glittering Herod. It was not a biblical play in a sense, and yet, as a critic said, it was a chapter or two of St. John's gospel that had not previously been written.