"'He won't do it any more,' he says. 'He'll have something better.'
"The boy looked up at him. 'What?' he asks.
"'Clay,' says Insley, 'in a box. With things for you to make the clay like. Do you want that?'
"The boy kind of curled down in his pillow and come as near to shuffling as he could in the bed, and he hadn't an idea what to say. But I tell you, his eyes, they wasn't like any trapped thing any more; they was regular boy's eyes, lit up about something.
"'Mrs. Cadoza,' Insley says, 'will you do something for me? We're trying to get together a little shrubbery, over at the college. May I come in and get some lilac roots from you some day?'
"Mis' Cadoza looked at him—and looked. I don't s'pose it had ever come to her before that anybody would want anything she had or anything she could do.
"'Why, sure,' she says, only. 'Sure, you can, Mr. What's-name.'
"And then Insley put out his hand, and she took it, I noted special. I donno as I ever see anybody shake hands with her before, excep' when somebody was gettin' buried out of her house.
"When we got out on the road again, I noticed that Insley went swinging along so's I could hardly keep up with him; and he done it sort of automatic, and like it was natural to him. I didn't say anything. If I've learned one thing living out and in among human beings, it's that if you don't do your own keeping still at the right time, nobody else is going to do it for you. He spoke up after a minute like I thought he would; and he spoke up buoyant—kind of a reverent buoyant:—
"'I don't believe we're discharged from the universe, after all,' he says, and laughed a little. 'I believe we've still got our job.'