e beast
needs a rest. Its foot's sore; and Jonesy there is pretty near to lung
fever, judging from the way he coughs." He nodded toward the boy, who
had placed his chair as close to the stove as possible. The child's face
was drawn into a pucker by the tingling pains in his half-frozen feet,
and his efforts to keep from coughing.

Malcolm looked at him steadily. He had read about boys who were homeless
and hungry and cold, but he had never really understood how much it
meant to be all that. This was the first time in his ten short years
that he had ever come close to real poverty. He had seen the swarms of
beggars that infest such cities as Naples and Rome, and had tossed them
coppers because that seemed a part of the programme in travelling. He
had not really felt sorry for them, for they did not seem to mind it.
They sat on the steps in the warm Italian sunshine, and waited for
tourists to throw them money, as comfortably as toads sit blinking at
flies. But this was different. A wave of pity swept through Malcolm's
generous little heart as he looked at Jonesy, and the man watching him
shrewdly saw it.

"Of course," he whined, "a little gen'leman like you don't know what it
is to go from town to town and have every door shut in your face. You
don't think that this is a hard-hearted, stingy old world, because it
has given you the cream of everything. But if you'd never had anything
all your life but other people's scraps and leavings, and you hadn't any
home or friends or money, and was sick besides, you'd think things
wasn't very evenly divided. Wouldn't you now? You'd think it wasn't
right that some should have all that heart can wish, and others not
enough to keep soul and body together. If you'd a-happened to be Jonesy,
and Jonesy had a-happened to 'a' been you, I reckon you'd feel it was
pretty tough to see such a big difference between you. It doesn't seem
fair now, does it?"

"No," admitted Malcolm, faintly. He had taken a dislike to the man. He
could not have told why, but his child instinct armed him with a sudden
distrust. Still, he felt the force of the whining appeal, and the burden
of an obligation to help them seemed laid upon his shoulders.

"Grandmother is afraid for anybody to sleep in the barn, on account of
fire," he said, after a moment's thought, "and I'm sure she wouldn't let
you come into the house without you'd had a bath and some clean clothes.
Grandmother is dreadfully particular," he added