Going on was only in letting the night matron scrub his face and hands, and submitting patiently. As they went from the washroom to the dining room he held her by the hand. He did this first because he couldn't let her go, and then because the halls were big and bare and dark. Never had he been in any place so vast, or so impersonal. He was used to strangeness, as they moved so often, but not to strangeness on so immense a scale. It was a relief to him, because it brought in a note of hominess, to hear from an upper floor a forlorn little baby cry.
His supper toned him up. He could speak of his great sorrow. While the night matron sat with him and helped him to porridge he asked, suddenly:
"Will they let me go to jail and stay with my mudda to-morrow?"
"You see, dear, your mother may not be in jail to-morrow. Perhaps she'll be let out, and then you can go home with her."
"They didn't ought to put her in. I'm big. I could work for her, and then she wouldn't have to take things no more."
"But bless you, darling, you'll be able to work for her as it is. They won't keep her very long—not so very long—and I'll look after you till she comes out. After that...."
"What's your name?" he asked, solemnly, as if he wished to nail her to the bargain.
"Mrs. Crewdson's my name. I'm a widow. I like little boys. I like you especially. I think we're going to be friends."
As a proof of this she took him to her own room, instead of to a dormitory, where she gave him a bath, found a clean night-shirt which, being too big, descended to his feet, and put him to sleep in a cot she kept on purpose for homeless little children in danger of being too lonely.
"You see, dear," she explained to him, "I don't go to bed all night. I stay up to look after all the little children—there are a lot of them in this house—who may want something. So you needn't be afraid. I'll leave a light burning, and I'll be in and out all the time. If you wake up and hear a noise, you'll know that that'll be me going about in the rooms, but mostly I'll be in this room. Now, don't you want to say your prayers?"