“All illnesses must have that, as I believe,” said Lionel.  “Mine has taken its own time pretty well, has it not?”

Grind shook his head.

“You don’t look none the better for your bout, sir.  And it’s a long time you must have been a-getting strong.  Mr. Jan, he said, just a month ago, when he first come to see me, as you was well, so to say, then.  Ah! it’s only them as have tried it knows what the pulling through up to strength again is, when the illness itself seems gone.”

Lionel’s conscience was rather suggestive at that moment.  He might have been stronger than he was, by this time, had he “pulled through” with a better will, and given way less.  “I am sorry not to see you better, Grind,” he kindly said.

“You see me at the worst, sir, to-day,” said the man, in a tone of apology, as if seeking to excuse his own sickness.  “I be getting better, and that’s a thing to be thankful for.  I only gets the fever once in three days now.  Yesterday, sir, I got down to the field, and earned what’ll come to eighteen pence.  I did indeed, sir, though you’d not think it, looking at me to-day.”

“I should not,” said Lionel.  “Do you mean to say you went to work in your present state?”

“I didn’t seem a bit ill yesterday, sir, except for the weakness.  The fever, it keeps me down all one day, as may be to-day; then the morrow I be quite prostrate with the weakness it leaves; and the third day I be, so to speak, well.  But I can’t do a full day’s work, sir; no, nor hardly half of a one, and by evening I be so done over I can scarce crawl to my place here.  It ain’t much, sir, part of a day’s work in three; but I be thankful for that improvement.  A week ago, I couldn’t do as much as that.”

More suggestive thoughts for Lionel.

“He’d a got better quicker, sir, if he could do his work regular,” put in the woman.  “What’s one day’s work out o’ three—­even if ’twas a full day’s—­to find us all victuals?  In course he can’t fare better nor we; and Peckaby’s, they don’t give much trust to us.  He gets a pot o’ gruel, or a saucer o’ porridge, or a hunch o’ bread with a mite o’ cheese.”

Lionel looked at the man.  “You cannot eat plain bread now, can you, Grind?”

“All this day, sir, I shan’t eat nothing; I couldn’t swallow it,” he answered.  “After the fever and the shaking’s gone, then I could eat, but not bread; it seems too dry for the throat, and it sticks in it.  I get a dish o’ tea, or something in that way.  The next day—­my well day, as I calls it—­I can eat all afore me.”

“You ought to have more strengthening food.”

“It’s not for us to say, sir, as we ought to have this here food, or that there food, unless we earns it,” replied Grind, in a meek spirit of contented resignation that many a rich man might have taken a pattern from.  “Mr. Jan he says, ‘Grind,’ says he, ’you should have some meat to eat, and some good beef-tea, and a drop o’ wine wouldn’t do you no harm,’ says he.  And it makes me smile, sir, to think where the like o’ poor folks is to get such things.  Lucky to be able to get a bit o’ bread and a drain o’ tea without sugar, them as is off their work, just to rub on and keep theirselves out o’ the workhouse.  I know I’m thankful to do it.  Jim, he have got a place, sir.”