“But you weren’t very clever to do this. Whew! What did you hit your thumb like that for?”

“Dunno.” He looked ruefully at the crushed member which the doctor laved gently and soothingly.

“Why didn’t you come to me with it?”

“Maw ‘lowed the’ wa’n’t no use pesterin’ you with eve’ything. She tol’ me eve’y man had to larn to hit a nail on the haid.”

David laughed, and the child trotted away happy, his hand in a sling made of one of the doctor’s linen handkerchiefs, and his box of pencils and his book hugged to his irregularly beating heart; but it was with a grave face that Thryng saw him disappear among the great masses of pink laurel bloom.