Her thoughts had been wandering, and she couldn’t speak till he gave her a clue. “I was reading of the woes of the Poles.”
“That is what I meant,” she said, “Poles of course, I never did care for them.”
“I didn’t know you had ever met any,” he said dreamily, then he plunged again into his book.
She was nearly dead with sleep that night, and soon she said, “Rudolph, would you just read me something about children, before I go to bed?”
He put down the war-book, and took up one of poetry. I was sleepy too, but I caught a phrase, “The cry of the children,” and later in the night, this phrase came back to me.
We had no walk—it was too late to go when mistress went to the baby, and master said to me, “Let us turn in too, Boy-Dog.”
It was good we got a little sleep early in the night, for we had rather a disturbed time later.
While master was undressing, he talked to me about children. “Poor little wretches,” he said. “How much they have to cry about. So many troubles that they outgrow with age.”
I listened to him with interest. I used not to know much about children, for I had never been thrown much with them, my owners being mostly childless or unmarried persons. However, as I told Gringo when I first met him, I had a great respect for the very young of the human kind, and I thought them remarkably clever.
Since the baby came, I had been observing him closely. His little face looked to me very wise, and sometimes his expression was almost painful, as if he were trying to tell us something of a wonderful place he had come from. But the poor little soul had no words to express his thoughts. He just waved his little fists, and rolled his head in despair.