Lizzie nodded.
“And if you remember, he was all the time inventin’ things. Well, now he’s got set that he can invent a machine so as you can see the dead. I mean spirits. Well, of course he’s crazy. Josh says he’s crazy as a bluefish. But what’s troublin’ him now is that he can’t finish his machine. He says that if he goes to the Farm, what with him bein’ blindish and not able to do for himself, that his glasses and wheels—and dear knows what all that he’s got for ghost-seein’—will get all smashed up. An’ I guess he’s ’bout right. They’re terrible crowded, Mis’ Dean says. Nat allows that if he could stay at Dyer’s, or some place, a couple of months, where he could work, quiet, he’d make so much money that he’d pay his board ten times over. Crazy. But then, I can’t help bein’ sorry for him. Some folks don’t mind the troubles of crazy folks, but I don’t know why they ain’t as hard to bear as sensible folks’ troubles.”
“Harder maybe,” Lizzie said.
“Josh said he just set and wrung his hands together, and he says to Hiram Wells, he says, ‘Gimme a month—and I’ll finish it. For the sake,’ he says, ‘of the blessed dead.’ Gave you goose-flesh, Josh said.”
“You can see that he believes in his machine.”
“Oh, he’s just as sure as he’s alive!”
“But why can’t he finish it at the Farm? I guess Mis’ Dean would give him a closet to keep it in.”
“Closet? Mercy! He’s got it all spread out on a table in his room at the hotel. Them loafers go up and look at it, and bust right out laughin’. Josh says it’s all little wheels and lookin’-glasses, and they got to be balanced just so. Mis’ Dean ain’t got a spot he could have for ten minutes at a time.”
They were silent for a few minutes, and then Lizzie Graham said: “Does he feel bad at bein’ a pauper? The Mays was always respectable. Old Mis’ May was real proud.”
Mrs. Butterfield ruminated: “Well, he don’t like it, course. But he said (you know he’s crazy)—‘I am nothin’,’ he says, ‘and my pride is less than nothin’. But for the sake of the poor Dead, grant me time,’ he says. Ain’t it pitiful? Almost makes you feel like lettin’ him wait. But what’s the use?”