extra big bags of special cats, pups, monkeys—jewelry, ice cream, bananas, pie, hats, shoes, shirts, dust pans, rat traps, coffee cups, handkerchiefs, safety pins—diamonds, bottles and big front doors with bells on—they cry and whisper and laugh about these things—and it never hurts unless the dirty thousand dollar bills with torn ears and patches on their faces say to each other, 92‘They kiss us welcome when we come, they kiss us sweet good-by when we go.’”

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The old Potato Face sat saying nothing. He fooled a little with the accordion keys as if trying to make up a tune for the words, “They kiss us welcome when we come, they kiss us sweet good-by when we go.”

Ax Me No Questions looked at him with a soft look and said softly, “Now maybe you’ll tell about Joe the Wimp.” And he told her:

Joe the Wimp shines the doors in front of the bank. The doors are brass, and Joe the Wimp stands with rags and ashes and chamois skin keeping the brass shining.

“The brass shines slick and shows everything on the street like a looking glass,” he told Lizzie Lazarus last week. “If pigeons, ponies, pigs, come past, or cats, pups, monkeys, or jewelry, ice cream, bananas, pie, hats, shoes, shirts, dust pans, rat traps, coffee cups, handkerchiefs, 93safety pins, or diamonds, bottles, and big front doors with bells on, Joe the Wimp sees them in the brass.

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“I rub on the brass doors, and things begin to jump into my hands out of the shine of the brass. Faces, chimneys, elephants, yellow humming birds, and blue cornflowers, where I have seen grasshoppers sleeping two by two and two by two, they all come to the shine of the brass on the doors when I ask them to. If you shine brass hard, and wish as hard as the brass wishes, and keep on shining and wishing, then always things come jumping into your hands out of the shine of the brass.”

“So you see,” said the Potato Face Blind Man to Ax Me No Questions, “sometimes the promises boys make when they go away come true afterward.”

“They got what they asked for—now will they keep it or leave it?” said Ax Me.

“Only the grasshoppers can answer that,” 94was the old man’s reply. “The grasshoppers are older. They know more about jumps. And especially grasshoppers that say yes and no and count one two three, four five six.”

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