"Let it alone!" he growled. "You take it for a type of yourself, eh?
It has another work to do than to grow fat and sleep about the barnyard."

She opened the cage.

"I think I will take it."

"No," he said, quietly. "It has a master here. Not P. Teagarden.
Why, Margret," pushing his stubby finger between the tin bars
"do you think the God you believe in would have sent it here
without a work to do?"

She looked up; there was a curious tremour in his flabby face, a
shadow in his rough voice.

"If it dies here, its life won't have been lost. Nothing is lost.
Let it alone."

"Not lost?" she said, slowly, refastening the cage. "Only I think"----

"What, child?"

She glanced furtively at him.

"It's a hard, scraping world where such a thing as that has work to do!"

He vouchsafed no answer. She waited to see his lip curl
bitterly, and then, amused, went down the stairs. She had paid
him for his sneer.