‘You’re right. It’s a folly always to talk, leastways when you’ve nothing to talk about, and the freaks of a mad woman don’t amount to much. We shan’t hear no more about her.’
Nor did they for days, nay, weeks, but months, and the episode was fading from their memories, at least from that of the Sergeant, when the lady suddenly re-appeared unattended and alone.
She looked suspiciously about her as she entered the room.
‘I could not come before. I have been watched. Even now I fear they are on my track. Quick! Where is the boy?’
Hercules Albert was where he and his brothers generally were—in mischief.
‘I must see him; my heart yearns for him. And to think that I should find him thus! How inscrutable are the ways of Providence! My sweet, my pet, it is balm to my wounded heart!’ And she kissed and fondled the boy, regardless of the mud with which his dirty face was encrusted, and of his own evident perturbation and objection to these endearments.
‘But I must not waste time. I may be disturbed before I have said my say. Listen: you will let me have the child? You shall name your own price. I will ask no questions. Keep your own counsel. You shall not divulge your secrets.’
‘There ain’t no secrets to divulge,’ said the Sergeant stoutly. ‘And you shan’t buy a brat of mine, as though he were a full-blooded Congo on the West coast.’
‘Wait, Larkins—let’s see what the lady means,’ the practical wife interposed. Mrs. Larkins was quite quiet and self-possessed, as she looked her strange visitor full in the face. ‘Perhaps she will explain. Do you wish to adopt the child?’