“Your hair is just like one of my queens--the sunbeams are playing about all over it”--and Marigold felt the other hand steal gently across and touch her hair very softly, and she thanked the Serpent that she had been made so beautiful to give pleasure to this one little cripple child. “How did you like my aunt?” she asked aloud. “Very much, thank you. She is so strong and kind. She carried me to bed quite easily, and mother said it was wonderful the way she did.” “Did Dr Quack come yesterday?” “N--no.” And suddenly Marigold felt something drop into her hair, but was too tactful to look up, and a tear gathered in her own eyes. “He hasn’t been for three days now. I expect he’s got tired of it. I’ve been frightened all along he would. If I had both legs and was strong, it would be different.” And suddenly a pair of tender arms were holding the wasted body very tight. “Don’t talk like that, Patches; it isn’t kind. If he’s a good man, he would never get tired of coming to see you when you’re ill. But anyway, I’ll always come. Perhaps if I sing, it will be the next best thing, won’t it?” “Yes, it’s very kind of you. But you won’t ever get tired, will you--not till I die?” and the little thin hands caught hold of hers with a terrible weakness and fear, and the big black eyes looked into her sad ones. “No, I won’t leave you,” she said, a sudden unaccountable passion trembling in her voice, “not--not till you _live_. I won’t talk of death--I don’t understand it.” “Don’t you? But I do. It comes like a great suffocating wave and presses against your chest and face, and your arms and legs get weak and cold, and your brain keeps going round in weak whirls so that you can’t think or see properly, and the pain goes the same way. That’s how I was the night before last once, and that’s how I was once before, and poor mother was so tired she slept through all the coughing, though her door was open that leads in to me. And oh!” he continued in a whisper, “it isn’t mother I want at times like that, she’s too weak and tired and her arms are so thin. I want--I want Dr Quack--I’m frightened all alone--I don’t know how it is, but I’m frightened.” And he turned away from her to the other arm of the chair, and gave way to a violent fit of crying. Then Marigold pulled herself together with inward reproaches and some alarm. What had she been about to allow him to get into this state? “Patches!” said she, with fear and entreaty in her voice, “Patches! _don’t_ cry, please don’t--I can’t bear to see you cry. See! Look! I’ve brought my tambourine--I’m going to dance for you, a dance I learnt far away, in a land where people never die till they get grumpy and old and disagreeable.” And as she rattled the bells, taking it from the case, he looked up, and by degrees his sobs subsided.