“I think you should attend to your mother first,” he said, gently, as the baby made a grab at the little tin pot, the look of which it seemed to know, and shook half the milk over itself.
“Poor mammy!” said Tam, who was gnawing a bit of bread; and, with his bread in one hand, he got up and put a little gin and water quite hot between his mother’s lips. She swallowed it without opening her eyes or seeming to be conscious, and Tam climbed down from the bed again with a clear conscience.
“We’ll gie her some broth,” he said, manfully, while he and Dick, munching bread and raw bacon, tumbled the beef in a lump into the saucepan, drowned in water with some whole onions, in the common fashion of cottage-cooking. The baby, meanwhile, was placidly swallowing the milk that the little Earl held for it very carefully, and, when that was done, accepted a crust that he offered it to suck.
The two boys were crouching before the crackling fire, munching voraciously, and watching the boiling of the old black pot. They had quite forgotten their benefactor.
“My! What’ll Peg say when she’s to home?” chuckled Tam.
“She’ll say that she’d ha’ cooked better,” growled Dick. “Golly! ain’t the fat good?”
Bertie stood aloof, pleased, and yet sorrowful because they did not notice him.
Even the baby had so completely centred its mind in the crust that it had abandoned all memory of the red scarf.
Bertie looked on a little while, but no one seemed to remember him. The boys’ eyes were glowing on the saucepan, and their cheeks were filled out with food as the cherubs in his chapel at home were puffed out with air as they blew celestial trumpets.