"Go ahead and tell us," he urged. "I 'll understand."
"No, you won't. You can't."
"Yes, sure. Go ahead."
'Frisco Kid choked and shook his head. "I don't think I could, anyway.
It 's more the things I feel, and I don't know how to put them in words."
Joe's hand patted his shoulder reassuringly, and he went on: "Well, it 's
this way. You see, I don't know much about the land, and people, and
things, and I never had any brothers or sisters or playmates. All the
time I did n't know it, but I was lonely--sort of missed them down in
here somewheres." He placed a hand over his breast. "Did you ever feel
downright hungry? Well, that 's just the way I used to feel, only a
different kind of hunger, and me not knowing what it was. But one day,
oh, a long time back, I got a-hold of a magazine and saw a picture--that
picture, with the two girls and the boy talking together. I thought it must
be fine to be like them, and I got to thinking about the things they said
and did, till it came to me all of a sudden like, and I knew it was just
loneliness was the matter with me.
"But, more than anything else, I got to wondering about the girl who looks
out of the picture right at you. I was thinking about her all the time,
and by and by she became real to me. You see, it was making believe, and
I knew it all the time, and then again I did n't.
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