There in the hay, with the shining dust of the sunbeams falling athwart the old barn floor, the boy lay and listened.

Thoughts that he had no words for, ambitions that he could not express, yet that filled him with vague longing, seemed to vibrate along the earnest voice, and tremble from the fulness of George's heart into his.

Even after George stopped talking and began to whistle softly in the pause that followed, John Jay lay quite still with his face hidden in his arms.
Ned came in presently, rustling around through the hay after eggs, and singing at the top of his voice.

The sound seemed to bring John Jay back to his common every-day self.

He sat up, grinning as if he had never heard of such things as tears; but those he had shed must have made his eyesight clearer.