ppies.

"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.

"Not good to eat, Biddy."

At those words, one after the other, cautiously, the three little Trysts
smiled. Finding that Tod smiled too, they broadened, and Billy burst
into chuckles. Then, cluster