"Even a beggar has flatterers. They overrate me." The accompanying shrug
of his great shoulders had an affectation of humility. "Now, if I had a
pair of legs--but I haven't. And if I had I shouldn't be an East-Sider.
For the maimed, the crippled, the diseased, it is pleasantest to be in
residence on the East Side. You have company. You may forget your own
misfortunes in contemplating the greater misfortunes of others."

"Do you mind telling me," she asked, "where you learned your English?"

"My father," Blizzard explained, "was rather a distinguished
man--Massachusetts Institute of Technology man, University of Berlin,
degree from Harvard and Oxford. He had a prim way of putting things. I
suppose I caught it."

The usual whine about better days was missing from the beggar's voice.
If he seemed a little proud of his high beginnings, he did not seem in
the least perturbed by the contemplation of his fallen estate. Barbara
was by now frankly interested, and proceeded with characteristic
directness to ask questions.

"Is your father living?"

"No. But it would hardly matter. We became thoroughly incompatible after
my accident. He had very high ambitions for me, and a chronic disgust
for anything abnormal--such as little boys who had had their legs
snipped off. I didn't like it either. I suspect it made an unusually
vicious child of me, a wicked, vengeful child."

Blizzard's candid expression implied that he had, however, soon seen the