When Blade-o'-Grass quitted Jimmy's shop, she felt as if she would have liked to sing, she was so blithe and happy. She spent the whole sixpence, and treated herself to half a pint of stout. 'This is for you, pet!' she said to her baby, as she drank. She drank only half of it; the other half she saved for Tom. But although she waited up, and listened to the bells--gratefully now--until long past midnight, Tom did not come home. And when she rose on Christmas morning, he was still absent. She wandered out to look for him, but could not find him; and then hurried back, hoping that he might have come in her absence. As the day wore on, she grew more and more anxious, and tormented herself with fears and fancies as to what could have happened to him. So she passed her Christmas-day. In the afternoon she fell asleep, with her baby in her arms. At first she dreamt of all kinds of terrors, and lived over again, in her dreams, many of the miseries of her past life; but after a time her sleep became more peaceful, and her mind wandered back to the time when, a child of three years of age, she sat on the stones in the dirty yard, looking in silent delight at the Blades of Grass springing from the ground.
When she awoke it was dark. She went to the window, shivering; it was snowing fast. All the food was gone, and she was hungry again. What should she do? Suddenly a terrible fear smote her. Baby was very quiet. She looked at the sleeping child's white face by the white light of the snow, and placed her ears to the pretty mouth. Thank God! she felt the child's warm breath. But it would wake up presently, and she had no milk to give. The child's lips and fingers were wandering now to the mother's bosom. She could not stand this agony of hunger and darkness and solitude any longer; she must go into the streets.
Out into the streets, where the snow was falling heavily, she went. She looked wistfully about for Tom, but saw no signs of him. Into the wider thoroughfares she wandered. How white they were! how pure! how peaceful! A virgin world had taken the place of the old; a newborn world seemed to lie before her, with its pure white page ready for the finger of God to write upon. She wandered on and on, until she came to a square. She knew it immediately--Buttercup-square. Why, here it was that Mr. Merrywhistle lived, and he had made her promise that she would come to him when she wanted a friend. 'When I don't know which way to turn, I'll come to you,' she had said. Well, she didn't know which way to turn. She walked slowly towards a house, through the shutters of which she could see pleasant gleams of light. It was Mrs. Silver's house, and she paused before it, and thought to herself, 'I'll wait 'ere till I see 'im.' And so, pressing her babe to her bosom, she waited, and listened to the music of happy voices that floated from the house into the peaceful square. Did any heavenly-directed influence impel her steps hitherward? And what shall follow for poor Blade-o'-Grass? I do not know, for this is Christmas eighteen hundred and seventy-one, and I cannot see into the future; but as I prepare to lay down my pen, I seem to hear the words that Robert Truefit uttered this morning--'Man, help the poor!'
THE END.
* * * * *
LONDON: ROBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.
