The lame man was an unrivaled listener—­a circumstance which endeared him to youthful Laurence, in whom thoughts and the urge to express these thoughts in words rose like sap.  This fresh and untainted confidence, poured out so naively, taught John Flint more than any words or prayers of mine could have done.  It opened to him a world into which, his eyes had not heretofore been permitted to look; and the result was all the more sure and certain, in that the children had no faintest idea of the effect they were producing.  They had no end to gain, no ax to grind; they merely spoke the truth as they knew it, and this unselfish and hopeful truthfulness aroused his interest and curiosity; it even compelled his admiration.  He couldn’t dismiss this as “hot air”!

I was more than glad to have him thus taught.  It was a salutary lesson, tending to temper his overweening confidence and to humble his contemptuous pride.  In his own world he had been supreme, a figure of sinister importance.  Brash had been crook or cop who had taught or caught Slippy McGee!  But in this new atmosphere, in which he breathed with difficulty, the young had been given him for guides.  They led him, where a grownup had failed.

Mary Virginia was particularly fond of him.  He had as little to say to her as to Laurence, but he looked at her with interested eyes that never lost a movement; she knew he never missed a word, either; his silence was friendly, and the little girl had a pleasant fashion of taking folk for granted.  Hers was one of those large natures which give lavishly, shares itself freely, but does not demand much in return.  She gave with an open hand to her quiet listener—­her books, her music, her amusing and innocent views, her frank comments, her truthfulness, her sweet brave gaiety; and he absorbed it like a sponge.  It delighted her to find and bring the proper food-plants for his cages.  And she being one of those who sing while they work, you might hear her caroling like a lark, flitting about the old garden with her red setter Kerry at her heels.

Laurence no longer read aloud to him, but instead gave Flint such books as he could find covering his particular study, and these were devoured and pored over, and more begged for.  Flint would go without new clothes, neat as he was, and without tobacco, much as he liked to smoke,—­to buy books upon lepidoptera.

He helped my mother with her flowers and her vegetables, but refused to have anything to do with her chickens, remarking shortly that hens were such fools he couldn’t help hating them.  Madame said she liked to have him around, for he was more like some unobtrusive jinnee than a mere mortal.  She declared that John Flint had what the negroes call a “growing hand”—­he had only to stick a bit of green in the ground and it grew like Jonah’s gourd.

Since he had begun to hobble about, he had gradually come to be accepted by the town in general.  They looked upon him as one who shared Father De Rance’s madness, a tramp who was a hunter of bugs.  It explained his presence in the Parish House; I fancy it also explained to some why he had been a tramp!