his, he would smile at her very sadly and say with a tender concern for
her before himself, "Nay, Alois, do not anger your father. He thinks that
I make you idle, dear, and he is not pleased that you should be with me.
He is a good man and loves you well: we will not anger him, Alois."

But it was with a sad heart that he said it, and the earth did not look so
bright to him as it had used to do when he went out at sunrise under the
poplars down the straight roads with Patrasche. The old red mill had been
a landmark to him, and he had been used to pause by it, going and coming,
for a cheery greeting with its people as her little flaxen head rose above
the low mill-wicket, and her little rosy hands had held out a bone or a
crust to Patrasche. Now the dog looked wistfully at a closed door, and the
boy went on without pausing, with a pang at his heart, and the child sat
within with tears dropping slowly on the knitting to which she was set on
her little stool by the stove; and Baas Cogez, working among his sacks and
his mill-gear, would harden his will and say to himself, "It is best so.
The lad is all but a beggar, and full of idle, dreaming fooleries. Who
knows what mischief might not come of it in the future?" So he was wise in
his generation, and would not have the door unbarred, except upon rare and
formal occasion, which seemed to have neither warmth nor mirth in them to
the two children, who had been accustomed so long to a daily gleeful,
careless, happy interchange of greeting, speech, and pastime, with no
other watcher of their sports or auditor of their fancies than Patrasche,
sagely shaking the brazen bells of his collar and responding with all a
dog's swift sympathies to their every change of mood.

All this while the little panel of pine wood remained over the chimney in
the mill-kitchen with the cuckoo clock and the waxen Calvary, and
sometimes it seemed to Nello a little hard that whilst his gift was
accepted he himself should be denied.