I looked about me timidly and nervously for a means of escape. Standing in the road, close to the kerbstone, and facing a portion of the pavement which was partly in shade, was a beggar-woman, with her face hidden on her breast. One hand held her thin shawl tightly in front of her; the other hand was held out supplicatingly. What it was that caused me to fix my eyes on her I cannot tell; perhaps it was because I recognised in her drooping form and humble attitude something kindred to my own pitiable condition. As I gazed at her, a little girl, very poorly dressed, and with a basket on her arm, stopped before the woman, and put a coin into her outstretched hand. The woman curtseyed, and stooped and kissed the little girl. As the child, her act of charity performed, walked away, I saw her face; and it was so sweet and good, that my mother's words with reference to the battered halfpenny came to my mind: 'I see an angel's face in it.' I watched her until she was lost in the throng; and then I turned to the beggar-woman again, and saw, as in a flash of light, my mother! Was it shame, was it joy, that convulsed me, as crying, 'Mother! mother!' I ran and fell senseless at her feet?
[CHAPTER VIII.]
A POSTMAN'S KNOCK.
It seemed to me as if I had closed my eyes and opened them with scarcely a moment's interval; and yet I was at home in our own little room, and my mother was bending over me tenderly. I could not immediately realise the change. The busy streets, and the glare in them, and my fear of the man who had accused me of being a thief, were still present to my mind. I clung closer to my mother.
'What is my darling frightened of?' she said soothingly. 'He is at home, and safe in his mother's arms.'
'At home!' I looked around apprehensively. 'Where's the man?'
'What man, dear child? The man who carried you home?'
I had no remembrance of being carried home.
'The man who carried me home!' I exclaimed; and repeated wonderingly, 'Carried me home! No, I don't know him.'
'There is no one here, dear child, but you and I. Taste this.'