wistful eagerness

At last, when he could endure no more, he jerked his hands apart. The blazing matches fell
sizzling into the snow, but the birch bark was alight. He began laying dry grasses and the
tiniest twigs on the flame. He could not pick and choose, for he had to lift the fuel
between the heels of his hands. Small pieces of rotten wood and green moss clung to the
twigs, and he bit them off as well as he could with his teeth. He cherished the flame
carefully and awkwardly. It meant life, and it must not perish. The withdrawal of blood from
the surface of his body now made him begin to shiver, and he grew more awkward. A large
piece of green moss fell squarely on the little fire. He tried to poke it out with his
fingers, but his shivering frame made him poke too far and he disrupted the nucleus of the
little fire, the burning grasses and tiny twigs separating and scattering. He tried to poke
them together again, but in spite of the tenseness of the effort, his shivering got away
with him, and the twigs were hopelessly scattered. Each twig gushed a puff of smoke and went
out. The fire-provider had failed. As he looked apathetically about him, his eyes chanced on
the dog, sitting across the ruins of the fire from him, in the snow, making restless,
hunching movements, slightly lifting one forefoot and then the other, shifting its weight
back and forth on them with wistful eagerness.