Graypate bristled and his thought-flow became aggressive. “I ain’t grieving for company. I can look after myself, like I have done since my old man went away to curl up by himself. I’m on my own feet. So’s every other guy.”
“I believe that,” said Pander. “You must pardon me—I’m a stranger here myself. I judged you by my own feelings. Now and again I get pretty lonely.”
“How come?” demanded Graypate, staring at him. “You ain’t telling me they dumped you and left you, on your own?”
“They did.”
“Man!” exclaimed Graypate fervently.
Man! It was a picture resembling Speedy’s conception, a vision elusive in form but firm and human in face. The oldster was reacting to what he considered a predicament rather than a choice, and the reaction came on a wave of sympathy.
Pander struck promptly and hard. “You see how I’m fixed. The companionship of wild animals is nothing to me. I need someone intelligent enough to like my music and forget my looks, someone intelligent enough to—”
“I ain’t so sure we’re that smart,” Graypate chipped in. He let his gaze swing morbidly around the landscape. “Not when I see this graveyard and think of how it looked in granpop’s days.”
“Every flower blooms from the dust of a hundred dead ones,” answered Pander.
“What are flowers?”