"The flowers come where they make things nice for them!" he said to
himself. "Where the flowers see dirt, they turn away, and won't come
out."

From childhood he had had the notion that the flowers crept up inside
the stalks until they found a window to look out at. Where the
prospect was not to their mind they crept down, and away by some door
in the root to try again. For all the stalks stood like watch-towers,
ready for them to go up and peep out.

They came to a pond by a farm-house. Clare had been observing with
pity how wretched Tommy's clothes were; but when he looked into the
pond he saw that his own shabbiness was worse than Tommy's downright
miserableness. Nobody would leave either of them within reach of
anything worth stealing! What he wore had been his Sunday suit, and it
was not even worth brushing!

"I'm 'orrid 'ungry," said Tommy. "I 'ain't swallered a plug this
mornin', 'xcep' a lump o' bread out o' granny's cupboard. That's what
I got my weltin' for. It were a whole half-loaf, though--an' none so
dry!"

Clare had eaten nothing, and had been up since five o'clock--at work
all the time till the farmer struck him: he was quite as hungry as
Tommy. What was to be done? Besides a pocket-handkerchief he had but
one thing alienable.

The very day she was taken ill, he had been in the store-room with his
mother, and she, knowing the pleasure he took in the scent of brown
Windsor-soap, had made him a present of a small cake. This he had kept