"He doesn't know that I have been at the back of the north wind," he said to himself. "If you have once been there, it just comes to you how to do a little to help."
After Nanny had been well seen to, Mr. Raymond took the boy home with him and they soon settled the matter of the six-pence between them.
"And now, what will you do with it?" the gentleman asked him.
"Take it home to my mother," answered Diamond. "She has a tea-pot with a broken spout and she keeps all her money in it. It isn't much but she saves it up to buy shoes for me. And there's the baby—he'll want shoes soon. And every six-pence is something, isn't it?"
"To be sure, my little man. And here is the book for you, full of pictures and stories."
There were poems in it too, and Diamond at once began to puzzle out one of them which ran like this:
I have only one foot, but thousands of toes;
My one foot stands but never goes.
I have many arms and they are mighty, all;
And hundreds of fingers large and small.
From the ends of my fingers my beauty grows,
I breathe with my hair and I drink with my toes.
In the summer, with song I shake and quiver,
But in winter, I fast and groan and shiver.
When Diamond ran home with his new book in his hand, he found his father at home already. He was sitting by the fire and looking rather miserable for his head ached and he looked sick. The next day, he had to stay in bed while his wife nursed him, and Diamond took care of the baby. By the next day, he was very ill indeed. And it was not long before their money was all gone.
Diamond's mother could not help crying over it but she came into Diamond's room so that the poor sick father should not hear it. Diamond was frightened when he heard her sobbing and said, "Is father worse?"