They took the clothes off the bed and pulled his feet into the bran-water. Zeen groaned; he opened his eyes wide and looked round wildly at all those people.
He hung there for a very long time, with his lean black legs out of the bed and the bony knees and shrunk thighs in the insipid, sickly-smelling steam of the bran-water. Then they lifted him out and stuck his wet feet under the bedclothes again. Zeen did not stir, but just lay with the rattle in his throat.
“What a sad sick man,” said Stanse, softly.
Mite wanted to give him some food, eggs: it might be faintness.
Treze wanted to bring him round with gin: her husband had once....
“Is there any, for the night?...” asked Stanse.
“There’s a whole bottle over there, in the cupboard.”
Zeen opened his eyes—two green, glazed eyes, which no longer saw things—and wriggled his arms from under the clothes:
“Why don’t you make the goat stop bleating?” he stammered.
They looked at one another.