afternoon Speug and Nestie were out for a ramble in the
country, and turning into a lane where the hedgerows were breaking into
green, and the primroses nestling at the roots of the bushes, they came
upon a sight which made them pause so that they could only stand and
look. Down the lane a man was dragging an invalid-chair, a poor and
broken thing which had seen its best days thirty years ago. In the chair
a woman was sitting, or rather lying, very plainly but comfortably
dressed, and carefully wrapped up, whose face showed that she had
suffered much, but whose cheeks were responding to the breath of spring.
As they stood, the man stopped and went to the bank and plucked a
handful of primroses and gave them to the woman; and as he bent over
her, holding up the primroses before her eyes, and as they talked
together, even the boys saw the grateful pleasure in her eyes. He
adjusted the well-worn cloak and changed her position in the chair, and
then went back to drag it, a heavy weight down the soft and yielding
track; and the boys stood and stared and looked at one another, for the
man who was caring so gently for this invalid, and toiling so manfully
with the lumbering chair, was Moossy.

"C-cut away, Speug," said Nestie; "he wouldn't like us to see him. I
say, he ain't a bad sort--Moossy--after all. Bet you a bottle of
g-ginger-beer that's Moossy's wife, and that's why he's so poor."

They were leaving the lane when they heard an exclamation, and going
back they found that the miserable machine had slipped into the ditch
and there stuck fast beyond poor Moossy's power of recovery. With many
an "Ach!" and other words, too, he was bewailing the situation and
hanging over his invalid, while she seemed to be cheering him and trying
if she could so lie in the chair as to lessen the weight upon the lower
side, while every minute the wheel sank deeper in the soft earth.

"What are you st-staring at, you idle, worthless v-vagabond?" said
Nestie to Speug. "Come along and give a hand to Moossy," who was so
pleased to get some help in the lonely place that he forgot the
revealing of his little secret. With Speug in the shafts, who had the
strength of a man in his compact little body, and Moossy pulling on the
other side, the coach was soon upon the road again, amid a torrent of
gratitude from Moossy and his wife, partly in English, but mostly in
German, but all quite plain to the boys, for gratitude is always
understood in any l