'Regular meals,' I murmured, somewhat timidly.
My mother rose instantly. Unless she accepted the offer, there was but one alternative before her; and no one knew better than I how her sensitive nature shrank from it. It was the bitterest necessity only that had driven her to beg.
'I will go at once and see your uncle, my dear. I don't know where Paradise-row is, but I shall be able to find it out. I will be back as soon as possible. Keep indoors, there's a dear child!'
She was absent for nearly three hours.
'Well, mother?' I said, running to the door as I heard her step on the stairs.
She drew me into the room, and sat down, with her arms round my neck.
'We will go, dear,' she said, and my heart beat joyfully at the words. 'it will be a home for us. Situated as we are, what would become of my dear child if I were to fall really ill? And I have been afraid of it many times. Yes, we will go. Your uncle Bryan keeps a grocer's shop. I told him I should have to give a week's warning here, and he gave me the money to pay the rent, so that we might go to him at once.'
My mother looked about her regretfully. It belonged to her nature to become attached to everything with which she was associated, and she could not help having a tender feeling even for our one little room in which we had seen so much trouble.
'Now, Chris, We will pack up.'
As uncle Bryan predicted in his letter, it did not take us long. Everything we possessed went into one small trunk, and there was room for more when everything was in. The smoke-dried monkey of a man in stone--the precious relic I had inherited from my grandmother--had been carefully taken care of, and now lay at the bottom of the trunk. It had not brought us much luck, and I regarded it with something like aversion.