"Hatfield?"
"How stupid I am!" The unintended words drawled out of his mouth and floated away. "Meant Deerfield. My leg...." Reuben (who knew everything) helped him shove down his breeches, then allowed him to sit up and look at the splinter-wound, a yellowish scabby island in a puddle of pink. He wished to study it, but Reuben was already pulling up the musty repellent garment and urging him back on the pile of sweet-smelling leaves. "Suppose that's what made me sick?"
"Maybe."
"Suppose I ought to be bled?"
"I daren't, Ben. I don't know how a physician does it. I might cut wrong and not be able to stop the flow."
"I'll do well enough."
"Yes, but you must eat, or you'll weaken."
Ben considered this. He was hungry, yes, but wasn't some difficulty connected with the idea of eating? Meanwhile someone, apparently himself, was burdened with a bladder about to burst. "Must go outside."
"Watch out!" Reuben somewhere sounded frightened or angry. "You'll fetch down the roof if you try to stand."
That was sensible, Ben observed—of course he would, and then they'd have all the trouble of building it over. He located Reuben kneeling in a whiteness outside, ready to help him in spite of his stupidity, and crawled to him. Improbably, the boy transformed himself into a pillar under Ben's right arm, a curve of warm iron around Ben's middle—only Reuben who knew everything could have thought of that.