"I am your friend, Richard; never go hungry when you are destitute. I am not rich, but I always hope to be able to give you a piece of bread, and you musn't call yourself friendless ever again."
The dwarf hitched himself round on his chair, and fixed his great raw-looking eye inquisitively on the gentle face looking upon him.
"Friend to me, Monsieur, such a horrid little ape as me? Hih! hih! can't think that."
"Don't call yourself such names, Richard. The hand
that made me, made you; and He has commanded us to love one another," said the boy, sweetly.
"And you can love me, you? Hih! no, no, no, I wasn't born to be loved, only to be kicked round the world like a football while I live, and when I die to be kicked into a pauper's grave. Hard lot! deformed, friendless, wretched, poor. Nothing to love, no one to love me, hih! wonder what I was born for. Monsieur, what hurt you?"
Guly smiled at the sudden transition in the dwarf's manner, and replied briefly that he had been hurt with broken glass.
"Hih! that's bad. I must get down and go away—make you talk too much—'hurt your head.' Always hurt people's heads, I do—that part where their eyes are. Adieu, Monsieur."
The dwarf, after some labor, reached the floor, and succeeded in tucking a crutch under either arm.
"Hope you'll get well, Monsieur."