But the little group were passing as they spoke, and the injured lad had heard the girl’s words.
“Thank ye kindly, Missey,” he murmured, with a little flicker of life, and then sank back again into his stolidity and his silence.
Well, a farm hand is a useful thing, but what is a man to do with one who has an injured spine and half his ribs smashed. Farmer Foster shook his head and scratched his chin as he listened to the doctor’s report.
“He can’t get better?”
“No.”
“Then we had better move him.”
“Where to?”
“To the work’us hospital. He came from there just this time eleven years. It’ll be like going home to him.”
“I fear that he is going home,” said the doctor gravely. “But it’s out of the question to move him now. He must lie where he is for better or for worse.”
And it certainly looked for worse rather than for better. In a little loft above the stable he was stretched upon a tiny blue pallet which lay upon the planks. Above were the gaunt rafters, hung with saddles, harness, old scythe blades—the hundred things which droop, like bats, from inside such buildings. Beneath them upon two pegs hung his own pitiable wardrobe, the blue shirt and the grey, the stained trousers, and the muddy coat. A gaunt chaff-cutting machine stood at his head, and a great bin of the chaff behind it. He lay very quiet, still dumb, still uncomplaining, his eyes fixed upon the small square window looking out at the drifting sky, and at this strange world which God has made so queerly—so very queerly.