As to food and clothing, he did neither much better nor any worse than before: people were kind as usual, and kindness was to Gibbie the very milk of mother Nature.

Whose the hand that proffered it, or what the form it took, he cared no more than a stray kitten cares whether the milk set down to it be in a blue saucer or a white.

But he always made the right return.

The first thing a kindness deserves is acceptance, the next is transmission: Gibbie gave both, without thinking much about either.

For he never had taken, and indeed never learned to take, a thought about what he should eat or what he should drink, or wherewithal he should be clothed--a fault rendering him, in the eyes of the economist of this world, utterly unworthy of a place in it.