“Now, go down and heat two bricks and wrap them in something, and bring them up.”

Tryst’s boots and socks removed, Tod rubbed the large, warped feet.  While doing this he whistled, and the little boy crept up-stairs and squatted in the doorway, to watch and listen.  The morning air overcame with its sweetness the natural odor of that small room, and a bird or two went flirting past.  The small creature came back with the bricks, wrapped in petticoats of her own, and, placing them against the soles of her father’s feet, she stood gazing at Tod, for all the world like a little mother dog with puppies.

“You can’t go to school to-day, Biddy.”

“Is Susie and Billy to go?”

“Yes; there’s nothing to be frightened of now.  He’ll be nearly all right by evening.  But some one shall stay with you.”

At this moment Tryst lifted his hand, and the small creature went and stood beside him, listening to the whispering that emerged from his thick lips.

“Father says I’m to thank you, please.”

“Yes.  Have you had your breakfasts?”

The small creature and her smaller brother shook their heads.

“Go down and get them.”

Whispering and twisting back, they went, and by the side of the bed Tod sat down.  In Tryst’s eyes was that same look of dog-like devotion he had bent on Derek earlier that morning.  Tod stared out of the window and gave the man’s big hand a squeeze.  Of what did he think, watching a lime-tree outside, and the sunlight through its foliage painting bright the room’s newly whitewashed wall, already gray-spotted with damp again; watching the shadows of the leaves playing in that sunlight?  Almost cruel, that lovely shadow game of outside life so full and joyful, so careless of man and suffering; too gay almost, too alive!  Of what did he think, watching the chase and dart of shadow on shadow, as of gray butterflies fluttering swift to the sack of flowers, while beside him on the bed the big laborer lay? . . .

When Kirsteen and Sheila came to relieve him of that vigil he went down-stairs.  There in the kitchen Biddy was washing up, and Susie and Billy putting on their boots for school.  They stopped to gaze at Tod feeling in his pockets, for they knew that things sometimes happened after that.  To-day there came out two carrots, some lumps of sugar, some cord, a bill, a pruning knife, a bit of wax, a bit of chalk, three flints, a pouch of tobacco, two pipes, a match-box with a single match in it, a six-pence, a necktie, a stick of chocolate, a tomato, a handkerchief, a dead bee, an old razor, a bit of gauze, some tow, a stick of caustic, a reel of cotton, a needle, no thimble, two dock leaves, and some sheets of yellowish paper.  He separated from the rest the sixpence, the dead bee, and what was edible.  And in delighted silence the three little Trysts gazed, till Biddy with the tip of one wet finger touched the bee.