The Iron Crucifix

"

"I never thought before," said Terence, "of people's not dancing all the time that they were not at work or eating or sleeping. You know there in the hill they dance a good deal of the time, and I get so tired of it that it seems to me as if they danced all the time. I think it is delightful not to dance. And what is your grandmother doing? Is she studying?"

"Why, no, she is only reading."

"But what does she read, if she is not studying?"

"Why, I don't know; a story, maybe, or history, or poetry, or a sermon, or—it might be anything."

"Will you tell me about all those things some time?" Terence asked. "I have heard people tell stories, but I never read a story, and I never read anything except books to help me learn to make railways and telegraphs, so as to teach it to the people in the hill. That is all they think of when they are not dancing."

And Terence wondered like this at everything that he saw, and he often told Kathleen how tired he was of living in the hill and how much he wished that he could live outside among the real people, as he called them, instead of with the Good People. Once Kathleen tried to take Terence to see Peter and Ellen, and then a strange thing was discovered. Terence could not go there. When he came to the corner of the street where Peter and Ellen lived, he turned straight around and walked the other way. "This is the way," Kathleen called, and she hurried back after him.

When she came up with him he turned again and walked with her as they had been going at first. "I don't know why I did that," he said. "I didn't mean to. It was as if my feet turned me around and brought me back."

By this time they were at the corner again, and Terence did just the same thing over. He turned square around and walked back. He could not help it. He tried it again and again and he could not turn that corner. If you had been there and had seen him trying it, you would have thought that it was the funniest sight that you ever saw, though it may not sound so funny to tell about it.