He sat down by the fire. The girl knelt by him, took his cold hands, and rubbed them softly. Her heart was full; there were tears in her eyes.
The next morning, when the meager breakfast which Mr. Leeson and his daughter enjoyed together had come to an end, Sylvia ran off to find Jasper. She had stayed with her father during most of the preceding evening, and although she had gone as usual to drink her chocolate and eat her bread before going to bed, she had said very little to Jasper. But she wanted to speak to her this morning, for she had thoughts in the night, and those thoughts were driving her to decisive action. Jasper was standing in the kitchen. She had made up the fire with the smokeless coal, and it was burning slowly but steadily. A little, plump chicken lay on the table; a small piece of bacon was close at hand. There was also a pile of large and mealy-looking potatoes and some green vegetables.
“Our dinner for to-day,” said Jasper briefly.
“Oh Jasper!” answered the girl—“oh, if only father could have some of that chicken! Do you know, I do not think he is at all well; he looked so cold and feeble last night. He really is starving himself—very much as I starved myself before you came; but he is old and cannot bear it quite so well. What am I to do to keep him alive?”
“Do!” she said. “How can a fool be cured of his folly? That is the question I ask myself. If he denies himself the necessaries of life, how are you to give them to him?”
“Well,” said Sylvia, “I manage as best I can by hardly ever eating in his presence; he does not notice, particularly at breakfast. He enjoyed his egg and toast this morning, and really said nothing about my unwonted extravagance.”
“I have a plan in my head,” said Jasper, “which may or may not come to anything. You know those few miserable barn-door fowls which your father keeps just by the shrubbery in that old hen-house?”
“I thought not. I wonder a prudent, careful man like Mr. Leeson should keep them eating their heads off, so to speak.”
“Oh, they don’t eat much,” replied Sylvia. “I got them when father spoke so much about the wasted potato-skins. I bought them from a gipsy. I did not know they were so old.”
“We must get rid of those fowls,” said Jasper. “You must tell your father that it is a great waste of money to keep them; and, my dear, we will give him fowl to eat for his dinner as long as the old fowls in the shrubbery last. There are ten of them. I shall sell them—very little indeed we shall get for them—and he will imagine he is eating them when he really is consuming a delicate little bird like the one you and I are going to enjoy for our dinner to-day.”