"Where's the blanket I sent you last year?" asked the Doctor.
The mother raised her skinny arm and pointed about the room to patched trousers and coats.
Then she said, with a good deal of feeling, "If youse had five lads all trying to get under one covering to onct, Doctor, you'd soon know what would happen to that blanket."
First thing in the morning, Grenfell boiled some cocoa, and took the two elder boys out for a seal-hunt.
To a boy on the Labrador, a seal-hunt is the biggest kind of a lark. If it is winter, the seals may be caught near their blow-holes in the ice, and hit over the head with a stick called a gaff. In summer, they must be shot from a boat.
One of the boys, when he thought the Doctor was not looking, emptied the steaming fragrant cocoa from his mug and filled it with water instead.
"I 'lows I'se not accustomed to no sweetness," was his excuse.
The boys proved the jolliest of comrades and the best of huntsmen. In the nipping wind they rowed the boat where the Doctor told them, so that he could shoot. He had on a lined leather coat: but they had only torn cotton shirts and thin jackets to face the raw dampness of the early morning.
But they laughed and joked and carried on, and didn't care whether any seals were found or not. The hunt was unsuccessful. When Grenfell left, however, he promised the boys they should have a dozen fox traps for the winter.
Their eyes shone, and they grasped his hands. It was to them a princely, a magnificent gift.