Two hot tears, that made his eyes ache in their slow gathering, splashed down on the window-sill.
Down below Henri opened the kitchen door and snapped his fingers to call the dog.

Looking out, Jules saw him set a plate of bones on the step.
For a moment he listened to the animal's contented crunching, and then crept across the room to his cot, with a little moan.

"O-o-oh--o-oh!" he sobbed.

"Even the dog has more than I have, and I'm _so_ hungry!" He hid his head awhile in the old quilt; then he raised it again, and, with the tears streaming down his thin little face, sobbed in a heartbroken whisper: "Mother! Mother! Do you know how hungry I am ?" A clatter of knives and forks from the kitchen below was the only answer, and he dropped despairingly down again.
"She's so far away she can't even hear me!" he moaned.

"Oh, if I could only be dead, too!" He lay there, crying, till Henri had finished washing the supper dishes and had put them clumsily away.