Is it that you are afraid of tearing a hole in your
rags? Worthless vagabond! in the streets at this hour! Who are you?
Answer! But no. I forbid you to answer. There! You are cold. Warm
yourself as quick as you can," and he shoved him by the shoulders in
front of the fire.

"How wet you are! You're frozen through! A nice state to come into a
house! Come, take off those rags, you villain!" and as with one hand,
and with feverish haste, he dragged off the boy's rags which tore into
shreds, with the other he took down from a nail a man's shirt, and one
of those knitted jackets which are up to this day called kiss-me-quicks.

"Here are clothes."

He chose out of a heap a woollen rag, and chafed before the fire the
limbs of the exhausted and bewildered child, who at that moment, warm
and naked, felt as if he were seeing and touching heaven. The limbs
having been rubbed, he next wiped the boy's feet.

"Come, you limb; you have nothing frost-bitten! I was a fool to fancy
you had something frozen, hind legs or fore paws. You will not lose the
use of them this time. Dress yourself!"

The child put on the shirt, and the man slipped the knitted jacket over
it.

"Now...."

The man kicked the stool forward and made the little boy sit down, again
shoving him by the shoulders; then he pointed with his finger to the
porringer which was smoking upon the stove. What the child saw in the
porringer was again heaven to him--namely, a potato and a bit of bacon.

"You are hungry; eat!"

The man took from the shelf a crust of hard bread and an iron fork, and
handed them to the child.

The boy hesitated.

"Perhaps you expect me to lay the cloth," said the man, and he placed
the porringer on the child's lap.

"Gobble that up."

Hunger overcame astonishment. The child began to eat. The poor boy
devoured rather than ate. The glad sound of the crunching of bread filed
the hut. The man grumbled,--

"Not so quick, you horrid glutton! Isn't he a greedy scoundrel? When
such scum are hungry, they eat in a revolting fashion. You should see a
lord sup. In my time I have seen dukes eat. They don't eat; that's
noble. They drink, however. Come, you pig, stuff yourself!"

The absence of ears, which is the concomitant of a hungry stomach,
caused the child to take little heed of these violent epithets, tempered
as they were by charity of action involving a contradiction resulting in
his benefit. For the moment he was absorbed by two exigenc