'No hope?' he said, frowning. 'How do we know? Anyway there shall be no poison I can help.' But the boy's wish was law. On the afternoon before the arrival, Elizabeth was seized with restlessness. When there was nothing more to be done in the way of hospital provision (for which a list of everything needed had been sent ahead to Doctor Renshaw)--of flowers, of fair linen--and when, in spite of the spring sun shining in through all the open windows on the bare spotless boards, she could hardly bear the sight and meaning of the transformation which had come over the room, she found herself aimlessly wandering about the big house, filled with a ghostly sense of past and future. What was to be the real meaning of her life at Mannering? She could not have deserted the Squire in the present crisis. She had indeed no false modesty as to what her help would mean, practically, to this household under the shadow of death. At least she could run the cook and the servants, wrestle with the food difficulties, and keep the Squire's most essential business going. But afterwards? She shivered at the word. Yes, afterwards she would go! And Pamela should reign. Suddenly, in a back passage, leading from her office to the housekeeper's room, she came upon a boy of fourteen, Forest's hall-boy, really a drudge-of-all-work, on whom essential things depended. He was sitting on a chair beside the luggage lift absorbed in some work, over which his head was bent, while an eager tip of tongue showed through his tightened lips. 'What are you doing, Jim?' Elizabeth paused beside the boy, who had always appeared to her as a simple, docile creature, not very likely to make much way in a jostling world. 'Please, Miss, I'm knitting,' said Jim, raising a flushed face. 'Knitting! Knitting what?' 'Knitting a sock for my big brother. He's in France, Miss. Mother learnt me.' Elizabeth was silent a moment, watching the clumsy fingers as they struggled with the needles. 'Are you very fond of your brother, Jim?' she asked at last. 'Yes, Miss,' said the boy, stooping a little lower over his work. Then he added, 'There's only him and me--and mother. Father was killed last year.' 'Do you know where he is?' 'No, Miss. But Mr. Desmond told me when he was here he might perhaps see him. And I had a letter from Mr. Desmond ten days ago. He'd come across Bob, and he wrote me a letter.' And out of his pocket he pulled a grimy envelope, and put it into Elizabeth's hands. 'Do you want me to read it, Jim?' 'Please, Miss.' But she was hardly able to read the letters for the dimness in her eyes. Just a boyish letter--from a boy to a boy. But it had in it, quite unconsciously, the sacred touch that 'makes us men.'