Mook the half-wit lived happily.  With childlike faith he believed in the intelligence of the animals that lived in the sheds with him, and when he was lonely held long conversations with the cows, the pigs, and even with the chickens that ran about the barnyard.  He it was who had put the expression regarding being “laundered” into the mouth of his former employer.  When excited or surprised by anything he smiled vaguely and muttered:  “I’ll be washed and ironed.  Well, well, I’ll be washed and ironed and starched.”

When the half-witted old man left his husking of corn and came into the wood to meet Elmer Cowley, he was neither surprised nor especially interested in the sudden appearance of the young man.  His feet also were cold and he sat on the log by the fire, grateful for the warmth and apparently indifferent to what Elmer had to say.

Elmer talked earnestly and with great freedom, walking up and down and waving his arms about.  “You don’t understand what’s the matter with me so of course you don’t care,” he declared.  “With me it’s different.  Look how it has always been with me.  Father is queer and mother was queer, too.  Even the clothes mother used to wear were not like other people’s clothes, and look at that coat in which father goes about there in town, thinking he’s dressed up, too.  Why don’t he get a new one?  It wouldn’t cost much.  I’ll tell you why.  Father doesn’t know and when mother was alive she didn’t know either.  Mabel is different.  She knows but she won’t say anything.  I will, though.  I’m not going to be stared at any longer.  Why look here, Mook, father doesn’t know that his store there in town is just a queer jumble, that he’ll never sell the stuff he buys.  He knows nothing about it.  Sometimes he’s a little worried that trade doesn’t come and then he goes and buys something else.  In the evenings he sits by the fire upstairs and says trade will come after a while.  He isn’t worried.  He’s queer.  He doesn’t know enough to be worried.”

The excited young man became more excited.  “He don’t know but I know,” he shouted, stopping to gaze down into the dumb, unresponsive face of the half-wit.  “I know too well.  I can’t stand it.  When we lived out here it was different.  I worked and at night I went to bed and slept.  I wasn’t always seeing people and thinking as I am now.  In the evening, there in town, I go to the post office or to the depot to see the train come in, and no one says anything to me.  Everyone stands around and laughs and they talk but they say nothing to me.  Then I feel so queer that I can’t talk either.  I go away.  I don’t say anything.  I can’t.”

The fury of the young man became uncontrollable.  “I won’t stand it,” he yelled, looking up at the bare branches of the trees.  “I’m not made to stand it.”