He greeted me in a high, piping voice, limped across to the child,
and sat down. "Your little maid, mister?" he said.
I explained.
"Ah," he said, "I've left a little darlin' like this at 'ome. It's
'ard on us old folks when we're one too many; but the little mouths
must be filled, and my son, 'e said 'e didn't see they could keep
me on the arf-crown, with another child on the way; so I'm tramping
to N-, to the House; but it's a 'ard pinch, leavin' the little
ones."
I looked at him--a typical countryman, with white hair, mild blue
eyes, and a rosy, childish, unwrinkled face.
"I'm eighty-four," he went on, "and terrible bad with the
rheumatics and my chest. Maybe it'll not be long before the Lord
remembers me."
The child crept close and put a sticky little hand confidingly into
the tired old palm. The two looked strangely alike, for the world
seems much the same to those who leave it behind as to those who
have but taken the first step on its circular pathway.
"'Ook at my kitty," she said, pointing to the small creature in her
lap. Then, as the old man touched it with trembling fingers she
went on--"'Oo isn't my grandad; he's away in the sky, but I'll kiss
'oo."
I worked on, hearing at intervals the old piping voice and the
child-treble, much of a note; and thinking of the blessings
vouchsafed to the simple old age which crowns a harmless working-
life spent in the fields. The two under the hedge had everything
in common and were boundlessly content together, the sting of the
knowledge of good and evil past for the one, and for the other
still to come; while I stood on the battlefield of the world, the
flesh, and the devil, though, thank God, with my face to the foe.
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