supper, and helping what they could.  There was a very small squirrel on her shoulder, sitting up, as those creatures do, and turning a rocky fragment of prehistoric chestnut-cake over and over in its knotty hands, and hunting for the less indurated places, and giving its elevated bushy tail a flirt and its pointed ears a toss when it found one—­signifying thankfulness and surprise—­and then it filed that place off with those two slender front teeth which a squirrel carries for that purpose and not for ornament, for ornamental they never could be, as any will admit that have noticed them.

Everything was going fine and breezy and hilarious, but then there came an interruption, for somebody hammered on the door.  It was one of those ragged road-stragglers—­the eternal wars kept the country full of them.  He came in, all over snow, and stamped his feet, and shook, and brushed himself, and shut the door, and took off his limp ruin of a hat, and slapped it once or twice against his leg to knock off its fleece of snow, and then glanced around on the company with a pleased look upon his thin face, and a most yearning and famished one in his eye when it fell upon the victuals, and then he gave us a humble and conciliatory salutation, and said it was a blessed thing to have a fire like that on such a night, and a roof overhead like this, and that rich food to eat, and loving friends to talk with—­ah, yes, this was true, and God help the homeless, and such as must trudge the roads in this weather.

Nobody said anything.  The embarrassed poor creature stood there and appealed to one face after the other with his eyes, and found no welcome in any, the smile on his own face flickering and fading and perishing, meanwhile; then he dropped his gaze, the muscles of his face began to twitch, and he put up his hand to cover this womanish sign of weakness.

“Sit down!”

This thunder-blast was from old Jacques d’Arc, and Joan was the object of it.  The stranger was startled, and took his hand away, and there was Joan standing before him offering him her bowl of porridge.  The man said: 

“God Almighty bless you, my darling!” and then the tears came, and ran down his cheeks, but he was afraid to take the bowl.

“Do you hear me?  Sit down, I say!”

There could not be a child more easy to persuade than Joan, but this was not the way.  Her father had not the art; neither could he learn it.  Joan said: 

“Father, he is hungry; I can see it.”

“Let him work for food, then.  We are being eaten out of house and home by his like, and I have said I would endure it no more, and will keep my word.  He has the face of a rascal anyhow, and a villain.  Sit down, I tell you!”

“I know not if he is a rascal or no, but he is hungry, father, and shall have my porridge—­I do not need it.”

“If you don’t obey me I’ll—­ Rascals are not entitled to help from honest people, and no bite nor sup shall they have in this house.  Joan!”