She went down the stairs slowly.
"Seems I made a mistake," she said, speaking as carelessly as she could, but avoiding the boy's eyes. "You wasn' wanted up there, after all."
But he gazed at her, and flung out both arms with a strangling sob.
"You won't take me back! You'll hide me—you won't take me back!"
"Oh, 'ush!" said Tilda. "No, I won't take yer back, an' I'll do my best, but—oh, 'Dolph!"—she brushed the back of her hand across her eyes and turned to the dog with the bravest smile she could contrive— "to think of me bein' a mother, at my time o' life!"
CHAPTER V
TEMPORARY EMBARRASSMENTS OF A THESPIAN.
"Sinner that I am," said the Showman, "see how you are destroying and ruining my whole livelihood!"—DON QUIXOTE.
Mr. Sam Bossom, having poled back to the towpath, stepped ashore, made fast his bow moorings, stood and watched the two childish figures as they passed up the last slope of the garden out of sight, and proceeded to deliver his remaining hundredweights of coal—first, however, peering down the manhole and listening, to assure himself that all was quiet below.
"If," said he thoughtfully, "a man was to come an' tell me a story like that, I'd call 'im a liar."