"'Did she—did she?' Insley tempted him on.
"'Yes,' Chris went on, hopping beside him, 'but now I've got to hurry an' be a man, 'cause litty boys ain't very good things. Can you make po'try?' he wound up.
"'Why, Chris—can you?' Insley asked.
"'Well, when I was comin' along with my daddy that night I made one,' the child says. And when Insley questions him a little he got this much more out of him. 'It started, "Look at the trees so green an' fair,"' he says, 'but I forget the rest.'
"'Do you want to be a poet when you grow up?' Insley ask' him.
"'Yes, I do,' the child says ready. 'I think I'll be that first an' then I'll be the President, too. But what I'd rather be is the sprinkler-cart man, wouldn't you?'
"'Conceivably,' Insley says, and by the look on his face I bet his hand tightened up on the child's hand.
"'At Sodality,' I says, 'he just told them he was going to drive loads of hay. He's made several selections.'
"He looked at me over the child's head, and I guess we was both thinking the same thing: Trust nature to work this out alone? 'Conceivably,' again. But all of a sudden I know we both burned to help to do it. And as Insley talked to the child, I think some touch of his enterprise come back and breathed on him. In them few last days I shouldn't wonder if his work hadn't stopped soaring to the meaning of spirit and sunk down again to be just body drudgery. He couldn't ever help having his old possessing love of men, and his man's strong resolution to keep a-going, but I shouldn't wonder if the wings of the thing he meant to do had got folded up. And Christopher, here, was sort of releasing them out again.
"'How's the little Cadoza boy?' I ask' him pretty soon.