“But I didn’t want you to trouble!” she said.

“Oh, it wasn’t any trouble. I am setting the hens in about a week. But they won’t be scared of you. I s’ll have to see to them morning and night, but I shan’t bother you any more than I can help.”

“But you wouldn’t bother me,” she pleaded. “I’d rather not go to the hut at all, if I am going to be in the way.”

He looked at her with his keen blue eyes. He seemed kindly, but distant. But at least he was sane, and wholesome, if even he looked thin and ill. A cough troubled him.

“You have a cough,” she said.

“Nothing⁠—a cold! The last pneumonia left me with a cough, but it’s nothing.”

He kept distant from her, and would not come any nearer.