.." he mused. I tried to go.
"Sit there" (graciousness of complete gesture. The sheer kingliness of
poverty. He creased the indescribably soft _couverture_ for me and I sat
and looked into his forehead bounded by the cube of square sliced hair.
Blacker than Africa. Than imagination).
After this evening I felt that possibly I knew a little of The Wanderer,
or he of me.
The Wanderer's wife and his two daughters and his baby lived in the
women's quarters. I have not described and cannot describe these four.
The little son of whom he was tremendously proud slept with his father in
the great quilts in The Enormous Room. Of The Wanderer's little son I may
say that he had lolling buttons of eyes sewed on gold flesh, that he had
a habit of turning cart-wheels in one-third of his father's trousers,
that we called him The Imp. He ran, he teased, he turned handsprings, he
got in the way, and he even climbed the largest of the scraggly trees in
the _cour_ one day. "You will fall," Monsieur Peters (whose old eyes had
a fondness for this irrepressible creature) remarked with
conviction.--"Let him climb," his father said quietly. "I have climbed
trees. I have fallen out of trees. I am alive." The Imp shinnied like a
monkey, shouting and crowing, up a lean gnarled limb--to the amazement of
the very _planton_ who later tried to rape Celina and was caught.
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