“Where is Jean?” he asked with a quickness that had something of uneasiness in it.
“Here, father, here,” answered a shrill little voice from the farm-house door; “mother doesn’t want me to go out in the rain.”
“Stay where you are,” said Moser, throwing the traces on the backs of the horses; “I will go to you, little son. Go in, the rest of you, so as not to tempt him to come out.”
The three children went back to the doorway, where little Jean was standing beside his mother, who was protecting him from the weather.
He was a poor little creature, so cruelly deformed that at the first glance one could not have told his age or the nature of his infirmity. His whole body, distorted by sickness, formed a curved, not to say a broken line. His disproportionately large head was sunken between two unequally rounded shoulders, while his body was sustained by two little crutches; these took the place of the shrunken legs, which could not support him.
At the farmer’s approach he held out his thin arms with an expression of love that made Moser’s furrowed face brighten. The father lifted him in his strong arms with an exclamation of tender delight.
“Come!” he cried, “hug your father—with both arms—hard! How has he been since yesterday?”
The mother shook her head.
“Always the cough,” she answered in a low tone.
“It’s nothing, father,” the child answered in his shrill voice. “Louis had drawn me too fast in my wheeled chair; but I am well, very well; I feel as strong as a man.”