d himself.

"Do you want to help me?" he said.

She looked up at him from out of her little woollen
bonnet.

"Ay," he said, "you can put some taters in for me.
Look--like that--these little sprits standing
up--so much apart, you see."

And stooping down he quickly, surely placed the spritted
potatoes in the soft grip, where they rested separate and
pathetic on the heavy cold earth.

He gave her a little basket of potatoes, and strode himself
to the other end of the line. She saw him stooping, working
towards her. She was excited, and unused. She put in one potato,
then rearranged it, to make it sit nicely. Some of the sprits
were broken, and she was afraid. The responsibility excited her
like a string tying her up. She could not help looking with
dread at the string buried under the heaped-back soil. Her
father was working nearer, stooping, working nearer. She was
overcome by her responsibility. She put potatoes quickly into
the cold earth.

He came near.

"Not so close," he said, stooping over her potatoes, taking
some out and rearranging the others. She stood by with the
painful terrified helplessness of childhood. He was so unseeing
and confident, she wanted to do the thing and yet she could not.
She stood by looking on, her little blue overall fluttering in
the wind, the red woollen ends of her shawl blowing gustily.
Then he went down the row, relentlessly, turning the potatoes in
with his sharp spade-cuts. He took no notice of her, only worked
on. He had another world from hers.

She stood helplessly stranded on his world. He continued his
work. She knew she could not help him. A little bit forlorn, at
last she turned away, and ran down the garden, away from him, as
fast as she could go away from him, to forget him and his
work.

He missed her presence, her face in her red woollen bonnet,
her blue overall fluttering. She ran to where a little water ran
trickling between grass and stones. That she loved.

When he came by he said to her:

"You didn't help me much."

The child looked at him dumbly. Already her heart was heavy
because of her own disappointment. Her mouth was dumb and
pathetic. But he did not notice, he went his way.

And she played on, because of her disappointment persisting
even the more in her play. She dreaded work, because she could
not do it as he did it. She was conscious of the great breach
between them. She knew she had no power. The grown-up power to
work deliberately w