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She started to cry.

"Oh, dear," Diamond's mother sighed. She wrapped a woolen blanket tighter around Diamond's shoulders. "It's a sad world!" "Is it?" Diamond asked. "Oh, I didn't know." "How should you know, child? You've been too well taken care of, I suppose." "Oh yes, I have," said Diamond. "I'm so sorry, but I thought you were taken care of too. I thought my father took care of you. I will ask him about it. I think he only must have forgotten." "Dear boy!" said his mother, smiling now. "Your father's the best man in the world." "Just as I thought!" said Diamond. "I was sure of it. Well, then, doesn't he take very good care of you?" His mother's mouth quivered. "Yes, yes, he does," she said. She started to cry now. "But who's to take care of him? And how is he to take care of us if he's got nothing to eat himself?"

"Oh dear!" said Diamond. "Hasn't he got anything to eat? Oh, I must go home to him!"

"No, no, child!" said his mother. "He's not come to that yet. But what's to become of us I don't know."

"Are you very hungry, Mother? There's the basket. I thought you put something to eat in it."

"Oh, you silly darling," she said, smiling through her tears. "I didn't say I was hungry."

"Then I don't understand you. Tell me what's the matter." "There are people in the world who have nothing to eat, Diamond." "Then I suppose they - what do you call it? - die, don't they?" "Yes, they do," she said gravely. "How would you like that?" "I don't know. I never tried. But I suppose they go where they get something to eat." "Probably enough that they don't want it." "Then that's all right." Oh, poor boy. How little you know about things! Mr. Coleman's lost all his money, and your father has nothing to do, and we shall have nothing to eat soon." "Are you sure, Mother?"

"No, thank heaven, I'm not sure of it." She looked down at her lap. "I hope not," she said quietly.

"Then I don't understand. There's a piece of gingerbread in the basket, I know," he said.

"Oh, you little bird! You have no more sense than a sparrow that picks what it wants and never thinks of the winter and the frost and the snow."

"Oh. But the birds get through the winter, don't they?"

"Some of them fall dead on the ground."

"They must die sometime," Diamond said. He cocked his head and thought for a moment. "They wouldn't like to be birds always. Would you, Mother?"

"What a child you are!" she said.

"Oh, now I remember," said Diamond. "Father told me that day I went to Epping Forest with him that the rose bushes and may bushes and holly bushes were the birds's barns, all ready for the winter."

"Yes, that's true," she said, wiping her tears. "So you see, the birds are provided for. But there are no such barns for you and me, Diamond. We've got to work for our bread."

"Then let's go and work," Diamond said happily, starting to get up. His mother took his arm and pulled him back down beside her, hugging him.

"It's no use," she said. "We don't have anything to do."

"Then let's wait," he said, smiling up at her. "Then we'll starve."

"No, there's the basket. Do you know, Mother, I think I'll call the basket the barn."

"It's not a very big barn. And when it's empty, where are we then?"

"AT Auntie's cupboard."

"But we can't eat Auntie's things all up and leave her to starve."

"No, no. We'll go back to Father before that. He'll have found a cupboard somewhere by that time."

"How do you know that?" she asked.

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