In silence all three bent their eyes on the baby. His little fists, and
nose, and forehead, even his little naked, crinkled feet, were thrust
with all his feeble strength against his mother's bosom, as though he
were striving to creep into some hole away from life. There was a sort
of dumb despair in that tiny pushing of his way back to the place whence
he had come. His head, covered with dingy down, quivered with his effort
to escape. He had been alive so little; that little had sufficed. Martin
put his pipe back into his mouth.

"This won't do, you know," he said. "He can't stand it. And look here!
If you stop feeding him, I wouldn't give that for him tomorrow!" He held
up the circle of his thumb and finger. "You're the best judge of what
sort of chance you've got of going on in your present state of mind!"
Then, motioning to Thyme, he went down the stairs.

CHAPTER XVI

BENEATH THE ELMS

Spring was in the hearts of men, and their tall companions, trees. Their
troubles, the stiflings of each other's growth, and all such things,
seemed of little moment. Spring had them by the throat. It turned old
men round, and made them stare at women younger than themselves. It made
young men and women walking side by side touch each other, and every
bird on the branches tune his pipe. Flying sunlight speckled the
fluttered leaves, and gushed the cheeks of crippled boys who limped into
the Gardens, till their pale Cockney faces shone with a strange glow.

In the Broad Walk, beneath those dangerous trees, the elms, people sat
and took the sun--cheek by jowl, generals and nursemaids, parsons and
the unemployed. Above, in that Spring wind, the elm-tree boughs were
swaying, rustling, creaking ever so gently, carrying on the innumerable
talk of trees--their sapient, wordless conversation over the affairs of
men. It was pleasant, too, to see and hear the myriad movement of the
million little separate leaves, each shaped differently, flighting never
twice alike, yet all obedient to the single spirit of their tree.

Thyme and Martin were sitting on a seat beneath the largest of all the
elms. Their manner lacked the unconcern and dignity of the moment, when,
two hours before, they had started forth on their discovery from the
other end of the Broad Walk. Martin spoke:

"It's given you the hump! First sight of blood, and you're like all the
rest of them!"

"I'm not, Martin. How perfectly beastly of you!"

"Oh yes, you are. Th