ith
reservations as to fit--everywhere (it seemed) unequal to its task, in
particular at the wrists and lean shanks. His visage was in the main
of a gravely philosophical cast, full at the forehead, pensive about
the eyes, restless-lipped, covered upon cheeks and chin with a close,
curly growth of yellow beard of a color with his hair: 'twas as
though, indeed, he carried a weight of thought--of concern and
helpless sympathy for the woes of folk. 'Twas set with a child's eyes:
of the unfaded blue, inquiring, unafraid, innocent, pathetic,
reflecting the emotion of the moment; quick, too, but in no way to
shame him, to fill with tears. He spoke in a colorless drawl, with
small variation of pitch: a soft, low voice, of clear timbre, with a
note of melancholy insistently sounding, whatever his mood. I watched
him stumble on; and I wondered concerning the love his mother had for
him, who got no other love, but did not wonder that he kept her close
within his heart, for here was no mystery.

"Eh, Dannie?" he reminded me, with a timid little smile, in which was
yet some glint of vanity.

"Oh, ay!" I answered; "you're fair on looks."

"Ay," said he, in fine simplicity; "mother used t' say so, too. She
'lowed," he continued, "that I was a sight stronger on looks 'n any
fool she ever knowed. It might have been on'y mother, but maybe not.
The lads, Dannie, out there on the grounds, is wonderful fond o'
jokin', an' _they_ says I've a power o' looks; but mother," he
concluded, his voice grown caressive and reverent, "wouldn't lie."

It gave me a familiar pang--ay, it _hurt_ me sore--to feel this loving
confidence vibrate upon the strings within me, and to know that the
echo in my heart was but an echo, after all, distant and blurred, of
the reality of love which was this fool's possession.

"An' she said that?" I asked, in poignant envy.

"Oh, ay!" he answered. "Afore she knowed I was a fool, lad, she 'lowed
she had the best kid t' Twist Tickle."

"An' after?" I demanded.

"It didn't seem t' make no difference, Dannie, not a jot."

I wisht I had a mother.

"I wisht, Dannie," said he, in a break of feeling for me, "that _you_
had a mother."

"I wisht I had," said I.

"I wisht," said he, in the way of all men with mothers, as God knows
why, "that you had one--just like mine."

We were come to the turn in the road, where the path descended at
haphazard, over the rocks and past the pigpen, to the cottage of Eli
Flack, b