“Can’t you chew it?” he said. “Just try, for old Adam.”
The child was too weak to do anything but wink. Its appealing gaze was more than Adam could stand.
“What can Adam do for the little man?” he said.
He limped painfully back and forth again. The farmer should have returned before this. What could be keeping the wretch? The rover saw that the little life was fluttering, uncertainly, not yet sure of its wings on which to fly away.
“I have it!” he cried, in sudden exultation. “Bread and water!”
He hobbled across the room, snatched up a cup, crunched a fistful of crusts in his hand, put them in his cup and filled it half to the top with water. Then he stirred the hard pieces with his finger and crushed them smaller and padded them up against the side of the vessel, working the mass softer in feverish haste. Impatient to get results, he put the cup to the baby’s lips.
“Drink,” he coaxed. “Take a little, like a good partner. Can’t you take a little weeny bit?”
Groaning, thus to find the small Narragansett so weak, he hobbled about to find a spoon, with which he came hastily limping back. To his joy then, he saw a little of the slightly nutritious water disappear between the silent lips. He crooned with delight, hitched himself closer and plied his spoon clumsily, but with all the patience of a woman.
The child began to take the nourishment with interest.
Adam was happy in the midst of this new-found expedient, when the door behind him was suddenly thrown open, violently, and in burst half a dozen constables, armed to the teeth and panting wildly.