“Dear old Bobbin,” said Flutters, stroking the thin gray hair. The well-known voice, or perhaps the gentle touch, seemed to rouse him, for he slowly opened his eyes and seeing Flutters, smiled.
“You'll not try to keep me this time,” he said slowly, looking up at Flutters beseechingly, but in a voice too low and weak for even Josephine to hear.
“He said not to try to keep him this time,” Flutters explained, “but don't you think I ought to go right away for a doctor?”
Bobbin moved his head entreatingly from side to side, so Josephine said: “Well, perhaps not yet, Flutters, he seems so much more comfortable now,” whereupon Bobbin looked the thanks he felt. After a while, when he had once again mustered strength, he said: “Flutters, the little book.”
Flutters, knowing well enough what he meant, took the Prayer-Book which had been soon restored to Bobbin after that night when he had first joyfully discovered it, and turning to the selections for the twenty-fifth day of the month began to read. Josephine drew a chair to the fireplace and sat listening, with her hands folded in her lap, while Bobbin never took his eyes from Flutters's face, as he sat close beside him so that he might hear distinctly.
The little hut looked very cheery and cosey, converted as it had been into such a comfortable shelter, more comfortable indeed than Bobbin had ever known, and at a time, too, when a warm room and a quiet one meant more to him than it could have meant at anytime in all his life before. But the light in the room was momentarily growing more and more dim, and Flutters had to hold the book high in his hand toward the little window in order to see at all. Gradually Bobbin's tired eyes closed, and the last words that fell on his ears were these: “My soul has longed for Thy salvation and I have a good hope because of Thy Word. Mine eyes long sore for Thy Word, saying, Oh, when wilt Thou comfort me?” Flutters finished the selection and looked up. “Miss Josephine!” was all he found words to say, but both of them knew in a moment that in very truth “Evacuation Day” had come for Bobbin too, evacuation from all the sorrows of a long, hard life.
“I am not sorry,” said Josephine, looking down on the calm face from which all the care seemed at once to have vanished.
“Nor I,” said Flutters, “but he was such a good friend to me when no one else cared,” and then, unable to keep the tears back, he laid his arm on Bobbin's bed, and burying his face upon it, cried bitterly.
There was something sacred about this deep sense of personal loss that was finding vent in Flutters's hot tears, and for a while Josephine hesitated to intrude upon it. She moved quietly about the room setting its few little articles to rights, and then when there was nothing else to be done, and Flutters had gotten himself somewhat in hand, she sat down by his side.
“What do you know about Bobbin's history, Flutters?” she asked.