“Here are clothes.”

He chose out of a heap a woollen rag, and chafed before the fire the limbs of the exhausted and bewildered child, who at that moment, warm and naked, felt as if he were seeing and touching heaven.  The limbs having been rubbed, he next wiped the boy’s feet.

“Come, you limb; you have nothing frost-bitten!  I was a fool to fancy you had something frozen, hind legs or fore paws.  You will not lose the use of them this time.  Dress yourself!”

The child put on the shirt, and the man slipped the knitted jacket over it.

“Now....”

The man kicked the stool forward and made the little boy sit down, again shoving him by the shoulders; then he pointed with his finger to the porringer which was smoking upon the stove.  What the child saw in the porringer was again heaven to him—­namely, a potato and a bit of bacon.

“You are hungry; eat!”

The man took from the shelf a crust of hard bread and an iron fork, and handed them to the child.

The boy hesitated.

“Perhaps you expect me to lay the cloth,” said the man, and he placed the porringer on the child’s lap.

“Gobble that up.”

Hunger overcame astonishment.  The child began to eat.  The poor boy devoured rather than ate.  The glad sound of the crunching of bread filed the hut.  The man grumbled,—­

“Not so quick, you horrid glutton!  Isn’t he a greedy scoundrel?  When such scum are hungry, they eat in a revolting fashion.  You should see a lord sup.  In my time I have seen dukes eat.  They don’t eat; that’s noble.  They drink, however.  Come, you pig, stuff yourself!”

The absence of ears, which is the concomitant of a hungry stomach, caused the child to take little heed of these violent epithets, tempered as they were by charity of action involving a contradiction resulting in his benefit.  For the moment he was absorbed by two exigencies and by two ecstasies—­food and warmth.

Ursus continued his imprecations, muttering to himself,—­

“I have seen King James supping in propria persona in the Banqueting House, where are to be admired the paintings of the famous Rubens.  His Majesty touched nothing.  This beggar here browses:  browses, a word derived from brute.  What put it into my head to come to this Weymouth seven times devoted to the infernal deities?  I have sold nothing since morning I have harangued the snow.  I have played the flute to the hurricane.  I have not pocketed a farthing; and now, to-night, beggars drop in.  Horrid place!  There is battle, struggle, competition between the fools in the street and myself.  They try to give me nothing but farthings.  I try to give them nothing but drugs.  Well, to-day I’ve made nothing.  Not an idiot on the highway, not a penny in the till.  Eat away, hell-born boy!  Tear and crunch!  We have fallen on times when nothing can equal the cynicism of spongers.  Fatten at my expense, parasite!