They were all very good to him. Aunt Cordelia would come to her window with a little cake fresh baked from her oven, to tempt him to eat. Audrey would spend all her spare time in reading to him and trying to amuse him. Granny Robin would let him climb inside her window, and lie on her knee for hours together; whilst his father would do anything and everything that he thought would cheer and brighten the child whom he loved so dearly.
But although they were all so kind to him, although they all felt that he suffered far more from the intense heat than they did, still none of them were very anxious about him. They had been so long accustomed to his being weak and fragile, that it did not strike them as strange that he should be so completely exhausted by the weather; and they hoped and believed that when cooler days came his strength would return, and that he would be what he had been, and would do what he had been able to do before the hot weather set in.
It was old Joe who saw most clearly, in spite of the dimness of his sight for other things, that little Stephen was fading away. The evenings were long and light now, and the old man and the children spent more time together than before. The two graves were covered with flowers, and old Joe had taken Stephen's place in helping Audrey to water them and to take care of them. Stephen was too weak even to lift his own little can. But Joe would carry him in his arms to look at them, and to smell the roses which were growing on a little rose-bush, which he had given him to plant on the grave of the two grandchildren.
Yet tears would often come into the old man's eyes as he looked at the child. He had had no one to love him or to care for him till the children had found him, and now one of them was going to leave him.
"Joe," said Stephen to him one day, "you'll take care of the grave for me if I go away."
"Yes, Stephie, yes, to be sure I will," said the old man, as he wiped away the tears which would come in his eyes.
But he never asked him where he was going, or when. He knew, and Stephen knew, that the Child of Light was on his way to the Home of Light, where darkness cannot come. He could not help speaking of it that night, when Mr. Robin brought him his supper, that he might eat it under the lilac tree.
"The little lad's going fast," he said, with a sob.
"What little lad? Not Stephie!" said Mr. Robin.
"He is, though," said the old man; "and what's more, he knows it hisself."