"Because I was not tired—and I am not tired."
"Not tired! And your face is as white as a sheet! I don't believe you're fit to go out for food."
"How absurd! You talk as though I were a child!" Max lifted himself petulantly on one elbow, but his head drooped and the remonstrance died away before it was finished.
"I talk as if you were a child, do I? Then I talk uncommon good sense! Well, I'm off to wash."
"There is some soap in my bedroom." The voice seemed to come from a great distance, the elbow slipped from the arm of the chair, the dark head drooped still more, and as the door shut upon Blake, the eyelids closed mechanically.
Blake's washing was a protracted affair, for the day had been long and the toil strenuous; but at last he returned, face and hands clean, hair smooth, and clothes reduced to order.
"Sorry for being so long," he began, as he walked into the room; but there he stopped, his eyebrows went up, and his face assumed a curious look, half amused, half tender.
"Poor child!" he said below his breath, and tiptoeing across the room, he paused by the arm-chair, in the depths of which Max's slight figure was curled up in the pleasant embrace of sleep.
The fire had died down, the pool of candle-light was not brilliant, and in the soft, shadowed glow the boy made an attractive picture.