know that. But they are listening open-mouthed, in fascination drawing nearer and nearer, until an absent-minded little hand may even have hold of his sleeve.
Better than this, even, he likes to play at being a child himself, until he fairly forgets that he isn't one. Amber Locks used to have broomsticks for horses, seven of them stabled behind the woodshed door. He and Mr. Riley named them severally Nancy Hanks, Star Pointer, etc. And Mr. Riley knew so well how to ride a broomstick horse with one's head thrown up high, very high! He'd told the boy how. But he just ached to show him. So he did one day. People looking from their windows saw the celebrated writer canter gayly along Lockerbie Street astride a broomstick with his coat tails flying in the wind. And when he stopped, panting and out of breath, there was in his laughing face something of the old glory of childhood that was good to see.
***
Sometimes he puts the children into his books. There was a little boy lived next door. His name was David. And David had a spine that was crooked and crippled with rheumatism; and he was eleven years old. But his great ambition was to be a soldier. All the little boys around Lockerbie Street he used to gather daily in his front yard for training and he was the captain of the regiment. Always as Mr. Riley went by he would ask, "Well, and David, how's the regiment to-day?" Once at first, he had come along and found the boys in some altercation and had inquired, "What's it all about?" And David answered, "Why, sir, you see they all want to be officers, and it don't leave me any privates."
But the drilling went on. And one day David said wistfully as he walked by the poet's side, "Mr. Riley," and then very softly, "Mr. Riley, did you ever know a crooked soldier?"
"O, yes," promptly answered Mr. Riley, "and he was a very fine soldier, such a fine soldier indeed! David, do you see that robin over
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