How Ben Weatherstaff stared! His red old eyes fixed themselves on what
was before him as if he were seeing a ghost. He gazed and gazed and
gulped a lump down his throat and did not say a word.
Do you know who I am? demanded Colin still more imperiously.
Answer!
Ben Weatherstaff put his gnarled hand up and passed it over his eyes
and over his forehead and then he did answer in a queer shaky voice.
Who tha art? he said. Aye, that I do wi tha mother s eyes starin
at me out o tha face. Lord knows how tha come here. But tha rt th
poor cripple.
Colin forgot that he had ever had a back. His face flushed scarlet and
he sat bolt upright.
I m not a cripple! he cried out furiously. I m not!
He s not! cried Mary, almost shouting up the wall in her fierce
indignation. He s not got a lump as big as a pin! I looked and there
was none there not one!
Ben Weatherstaff passed his hand over his forehead again and gazed as
if he could never gaze enough. His hand shook and his mouth shook and
his voice shook. He was an ignorant old man and a tactless old man and
he could only remember the things he had heard.
Tha tha hasn t got a crooked back? he said hoarsely.
No! shouted Colin.
Tha tha hasn t got crooked legs? quavered Ben more hoarsely yet.
It was too much. The strength which Colin usually threw into his
tantrums rushed through him now in a new way. Never yet had he been
accused of crooked legs even in whispers and the perfectly simple
belief in their existence which was revealed by Ben Weatherstaff s
voice was more than Rajah flesh and blood could endure. His anger and
insulted pride made him forget everything but this one moment and
179