Matthew braced himself to listen, and this was what he heard:—
"We built a ship upon the stairs,
All made of the back bedroom chairs,
And filled it full of sofa pillows,
To go a-sailing on the billows.
"We took a saw and several nails,
And water in the nursery pails;
And Tom said, 'Let us also take
An apple and a slice of cake;'—
Which was enough for Tom and me
To go a-sailing on, till tea.
"We sailed along for days and days,
And had the very best of plays;
But Tom fell out and hurt his knee,
So there was no one left but me."
"So there was no one left but me," repeated the weak child-voice. Matthew rose from the third stair from the bottom, where he had been sitting, and stumbled somewhat blindly into the parlour, where he sat down on the slippery horse-hair sofa. He cleared his throat and blew his nose, and there was an expression on his face which was seldom seen there.
"And ther' was no one left but me." The forlorn weak voice repeating that, moved him strangely. Keturah was the last of the children. There had been six babies before Keturah, and none had lived beyond babyhood. At that moment he forgot how naughty she was, how unregenerate! He only remembered that she used to lay her baby face against his, and that she said "dada" the very first word she spoke.
A hundred pretty scenes of her first years flashed into his recollection. His suspicions of the curate were forgotten, and in their place came cold-handed fear to fill his heart with the dread that Keturah might not get well.
* * * * *
After all, one honest man can recognise another, whether he wear an M.B. waistcoat or a baker's apron. Anyhow, the curate so far won upon Matthew Moulder that he persuaded him to allow the district nurse to be sent to sit up with Keturah till she was "round the corner," and that the nurse might keep a sharp look out for the recurrence of "the grey look."
As Keturah grew better, Matthew made, with his own hands, and at the instigation of the curate, a whole series of fantastic little loaves that she might the better "fancy her tea."
"My Dada don't say much, but I knows now that 'e do like me," said Keturah, in a burst of confidence to Thomas Beames, and Thomas, with that caution for which the Cotswold folk are justly famed, replied—
"Mebbe 'e do. But folks when they be growed up be oncommon akard 'times."