The words did elate him, and his blood was stirred by them every time they returned to his mind. He remembered them through the days and nights that followed. He sometimes, indeed, awakened from his deep sleep on the hard and narrow sofa in Marco's room, and found that he was saying them half aloud to himself. The hardness of the sofa did not prevent his resting as he had never rested before in his life. By contrast with the past he had known, this poor existence was comfort which verged on luxury.
He got into the battered tin bath every morning, he sat at the clean table, and could look at Loristan and speak to him and hear his voice. His chief trouble was that he could hardly keep his eyes off him, and he was a little afraid he might be annoyed.
But he could not bear to lose a look or a movement.
At the end of the second day, he found his way, at some trouble, to Lazarus's small back room at the top of the house.
“Will you let me come in and talk a bit?'' he said.
When he went in, he was obliged to sit on the top of Lazarus's wooden box because there was nothing else for him.
“I want to ask you,'' he plunged into his talk at once, “do you think he minds me looking at him so much? I can't help it--but if he hates it--well--I'll try and keep my eyes on the table.''
“The Master is used to being looked at,'' Lazarus made answer.
“But it would be well to ask himself. He likes open speech.''
“I want to find out everything he likes and everything he doesn't like,'' The Rat said. “I want--isn't there anything--anything you'd let me do for him? It wouldn't matter what it was. And he needn't know you are not doing it. I know you wouldn't be willing to give up anything particular. But you wait on him night and day. Couldn't you give up something to me?''
Lazarus pierced him with keen eyes. He did not answer for several seconds.
“Now and then,'' he said gruffly at last, “I'll let you brush his boots. But not every day--perhaps once a week.''
“When will you let me have my first turn?'' The Rat asked.
Lazarus reflected. His shaggy eyebrows drew themselves down over his eyes as if this were a question of state.
“Next Saturday,'' he conceded. “Not before. I'll tell him when you brush them.''
“You needn't,'' said The Rat. “It's not that I want him to know. I want to know myself that I'm doing something for him.
I'll find out things that I can do without interfering with you.
I'll think them out.''
“Anything any one else did for him would be interfering with me,'' said Lazarus.
It was The Rat's turn to reflect now, and his face twisted itself into new lines and wrinkles.
“I'll tell you before I do anything,'' he said, after he had thought it over. “You served him first.''
“I have served him ever since he was born,'' said Lazarus.
“He's--he's yours,'' said The Rat, still thinking deeply.
“I am his,'' was Lazarus's stern answer. “I am his--and the young Master's.''
“That's it,'' The Rat said. Then a squeak of a half-laugh broke from him. “I've never been anybody's,'' he added.
His sharp eyes caught a passing look on Lazarus's face. Such a queer, disturbed, sudden look. Could he be rather sorry for him?
Perhaps the look meant something like that.
“If you stay near him long enough--and it needn't be long--you will be his too. Everybody is.''
The Rat sat up as straight as he could. “When it comes to that,'' he blurted out, “I'm his now, in my way. I was his two minutes after he looked at me with his queer, handsome eyes.
They're queer because they get you, and you want to follow him.
I'm going to follow.''
That night Lazarus recounted to his master the story of the scene. He simply repeated word for word what had been said, and Loristan listened gravely.
“We have not had time to learn much of him yet,'' he commented.
“But that is a faithful soul, I think.''
A few days later, Marco missed The Rat soon after their breakfast hour. He had gone out without saying anything to the household.
He did not return for several hours, and when he came back he looked tired. In the afternoon he fell asleep on his sofa in Marco's room and slept heavily. No one asked him any questions as he volunteered no explanation. The next day he went out again in the same mysterious manner, and the next and the next. For an entire week he went out and returned with the tired look; but he did not explain until one morning, as he lay on his sofa before getting up, he said to Marco:
“I'm practicing walking with my crutches. I don't want to go about like a rat any more. I mean to be as near like other people as I can. I walk farther every morning. I began with two miles. If I practice every day, my crutches will be like legs.''
“Shall I walk with you?'' asked Marco.
“Wouldn't you mind walking with a cripple?''
“Don't call yourself that,'' said Marco. “We can talk together, and try to remember everything we see as we go along.''
“I want to learn to remember things. I'd like to train myself in that way too,'' The Rat answered. “I'd give anything to know some of the things your father taught you. I've got a good memory. I remember a lot of things I don't want to remember.
Will you go this morning?''
That morning they went, and Loristan was told the reason for their walk. But though he knew one reason, he did not know all about it. When The Rat was allowed his “turn'' of the boot-brushing, he told more to Lazarus.
“What I want to do,'' he said, “is not only walk as fast as other people do, but faster. Acrobats train themselves to do anything. It's training that does it. There might come a time when he might need some one to go on an errand quickly, and I'm going to be ready. I'm going to train myself until he needn't think of me as if I were only a cripple who can't do things and has to be taken care of. I want him to know that I'm really as strong as Marco, and where Marco can go I can go.''
“He'' was what he always said, and Lazarus always understood without explanation.
