"'Haven't they told you,' he says, 'that if he has an operation on his knee, you can have a chance at saving the leg? I knew a case very like this where the leg was saved.'
"'I ain't been to see nobody about it,' says Mis' Cadoza, leaving her mouth open afterwards, like she does. 'What's the good? I can't pay for no operation on him. I got all I can do to keep 'm alive.'
"Eph moved a little, and something fell down on the floor. Mis' Cadoza pounced on it.
"'Ain't I forbid you?' she says, angry, and held out to us what she'd picked up—a little dab of wet earth. 'He digs up all my house plants,' she scolds, like some sort of machinery grating down on one place continual, 'an' he hauls the dirt out and lays there an' makes figgers. The idear! Gettin' the sheets a sight....'
"The child looked over at us, defiant. He spoke for the first time, and I was surprised to hear how kind of grown-up his voice was.
"'I can get 'em to look like faces,' he says. 'I don't care what she says.'
"'Show us,' commands Insley.
"He got back the bit of earth from Mis' Cadoza, and found a paper for the crumbs, and pillowed the boy up and sat beside him. The thin, dirty little hands went to work as eager as birds pecking, and on the earth that he packed in his palm he made, with his thumb nail and a pen handle from under his pillow, a face—a boy's face, that had in it something that looked at you. 'But I can never get 'em to look the same way two times,' he says to us, shy.
"'He's most killed my Lady Washington geranium draggin' the clay out from under the roots,' Mis' Cadoza put in, resentful.
"Insley sort of sweeps around and looks acrost at her, deep and gentle, and like he understood about her boy and her geranium considerable better than she did.