“Who's been tramplin' an' dancin' across where I've just sowed seed? I know it's you, nuisance! Can you find nowhere else to walk, but just over my seed beds? But it's like you, that is — no heed but to follow your own greedy nose.”

It had shocked him in his intent world to see the zigzagging lines of deep little foot-prints across his work.

The child was infinitely more shocked. Her vulnerable little soul was flayed and trampled. Why were the foot-prints there? She had not wanted to make them. She stood dazzled with pain and shame and unreality.

Her soul, her consciousness seemed to die away. She became shut off and senseless, a little fixed creature whose soul had gone hard and unresponsive. The sense of her own unreality hardened her like a frost. She cared no longer.