O. J. L.—Well, we will go on to something else now; I don't want to bother him about birds. Ask him does he remember Mr. Jackson?
Yes. Going away, going away, he says. He used to come to the door. (Feda, sotto voce.—Do you know what he means? Anyone can come to the door!) He used to see him every day, he says, every day. (Sotto voce.—What did he do, Yaymond?)
He says, nothing. (I can't make out what he says.) He's thinking. It's Feda's fault, he says.
O. J. L.—Well, never mind. Report anything he says, whether it makes sense or not.
He says he fell down. He's sure of that. He hurt himself. He builds up a letter T, and he shows a gate, a small gate—looks like a foot-path; not one in the middle of a town. Pain in hands and arms.
O. J. L.—Was he a friend of the family?
No. No, he says, no. He gives Feda a feeling of tumbling, again he gives a feeling as though—(Feda thinks Yaymond's joking)—he laughed. He was well known among us, he says; and yet, he says, not a friend of the family. Scarcely a day passed without his name being mentioned. He's joking, Feda feels sure. He's making fun of Feda.
O. J. L.—No, tell me all he says.
He says, put him on a pedestal. No, that they put him on a pedestal. He was considered very wonderful. And he 'specs that he wouldn't have appreciated it, if he had known; but he didn't know, he says. Not sure if he ever will, he says. It sounds nonsense, what he says. Feda has got an impression that he's mixing him up with the bird, because he said something about 'bird' in the middle of it—just while he said something about Mr. Jackson, and then he pulled himself up, and changed it again. Just before he said 'pedestal' he said 'fine bird,' and then he stopped. In trying to answer the one, he got both mixed up, Mr. Jackson and the bird.