fluffy growth
of golden hair on his cheeks. He pouted in a scared way like a child.
The cabman, short and broad, eyed him with his fierce little eyes that
seemed to smart in a clear and corroding liquid.

"'Ard on 'osses, but dam' sight 'arder on poor chaps like me," he wheezed
just audibly.

"Poor! Poor!" stammered out Stevie, pushing his hands deeper into his
pockets with convulsive sympathy. He could say nothing; for the
tenderness to all pain and all misery, the desire to make the horse happy
and the cabman happy, had reached the point of a bizarre longing to take
them to bed with him. And that, he knew, was impossible. For Stevie was
not mad. It was, as it were, a symbolic longing; and at the same time it
was very distinct, because springing from experience, the mother of
wisdom. Thus when as a child he cowered in a dark corner scared,
wretched, sore, and miserable with the black, black misery of the soul,
his sister Winnie used to come along, and carry him off to bed with her,
as into a heaven of consoling peace. Stevie, though apt to forget mere
facts, such as his name and address for instance, had a faithful memory
of sensations. To be taken into a bed of compassion was the supreme
remedy, with the only one disadvantage of being difficult of application
on a large scale. And looking at the cabman, Stevie perceived this
clearly, because he was reasonable.

The cabman went on with his leisurely preparations as if Stevie had not
existed. He made as if to hoist himself on the box, but at the last
moment from some obscure motive, perhaps merely from disgust with
carriage exercise, desisted. He approached instead the motionless
partner of his labours, and stooping to seize the bridle, lifted up the
big, weary head to the height of his shoulder with one effort of his
right arm, like a feat of strength.

"Come on," he whispered secretly.

Limping, he led the cab away. There was an air of austerity in this
departure, the scrunched gravel of the drive crying out under the slowly
turning wheels, the horse's lean thighs moving with ascetic deliberation
away from the light into the obscurity of the open space bordered dimly
by the pointed roofs and the feebly shining windows of the little
alms-houses. The plaint of the gravel travelled slowly all round the
drive. Between the lamps of the charitable gateway the slow cortege
reappeared, lighted up for a moment, the short, thick man limping busily,
with the