He followed me out on the stoop.
"There is von thing they vill let me do after a vile, though," he said, with a smile. "In America, I hear everybody make von long, strong groaning about their taxes. Those taxes, ven vill they come? And are they so very big, then? They must be very big to pay for all the free things."
"Why, Mr. Jeffro," I said, "but you won't have any taxes."
"But I am to be a citizen!" he cried. "Every citizen pays his taxes."
"No," I told him. "No, they don't. And unless you own property or—or something," says I, stumbling as delicate as I could, "you don't pay any taxes at all, Mr. Jeffro."
When I made him know that sure, he lifted his arms and let them drop; and he come on down the path with me, and he stood there by the syringa bush at the gate, looking off down the little swelling hill to where the village nestled at the foot. School was just out, and the children were flooding down the road, and the whole time was peaceful and spacious and close-up-to, like a friend. We stood still for a minute, while I was thinking that; and when I turned to Jeffro, he stood with the tears running down his cheeks.
"To think there is such a place," he said reverently. "And me in it. And them going to be here." Then he looked at me like he was seeing more than his words were saying. "I keep thinking," he said, "how hard God is vorking, all over the earth—and how good He's succeeded here."
Up to the gate run little Joseph, his school-books in his arms. Jeffro put both hands on the boy.
"Little citizen, little citizen," his father said. And it was like one way of being baptized.