“Oh, miserably cast down. Couldn’t hold up at all.”
“Poor chap. It’s hard lines. Why, the sentence was a cruel one.”
“It was—it was!” exclaimed several. “Everybody says so!”
“And what everybody says must be right—leastways, it can’t be very far wrong,” said Bill. “But it aint of no manner of use a-talking about that—Charley’s potted. There aint much chance now of his ever being a free man, not unless he can get the Home Office to commute his sentence, but I ’xpect there ain’t much chance of that.”
“Lord bless yer,” said Cooney, “yer might jist as well ’xpect to lift up St. Paul’s in the palm of yer hand. Commute—blow me tight, there aint no manner of chance of that there—and mind ye, Charley’s as right as the mail—never turned round on a cove in all his mortal days. Well, here’s to his good health.”
The speaker raised a full goblet to his lips and toasted our hero.
The woman known as Mrs. Grover, and who had been pleading so pertinaciously to Bill Rawton, was no other than Isabel Purvis, the mother of Alf Purvis.
The reader will doubtless remember that Laura Stanbridge had with her as a companion a Mrs. Grover when she first took Purvis under her protecting wing.
At this time her companion had no idea that the young bird-seller was her own son, but she had taken to him by one of those unaccountable influences which are past the comprehension of ordinary individuals.
As years passed over her head she comprehended that Miss Stanbridge’s protegé was her own offspring.