could, in hop-picking, apple-gathering, harvesting; only this summer
I had typhus fever, and could not work."

"What did you do then?"

"I lay in a barn till I got well--I'm quite well now; you need not be
afraid."

"No, indeed; I had never thought of that."

We soon became quite sociable together. He guided me carefully out
of the town into the Abbey walk, flecked with sunshine through
overhanging trees. Once he stopped to pick up for me the large brown
fan of a horse-chestnut leaf.

"It's pretty, isn't it?--only it shows that autumn is come."

"And how shall you live in the winter, when there is no out-of-door
work to be had?"

"I don't know."

The lad's countenance fell, and that hungry, weary look, which had
vanished while we talked, returned more painfully than ever. I
reproached myself for having, under the influence of his merry talk,
temporarily forgotten it.

"Ah!" I cried eagerly, when we left the shade of the Abbey trees, and
crossed the street; "here we are, at home!"