His dark blue eyes, deep set beneath his bushy brows, she thought the most serious and earnest she had ever seen in any of the hundreds of homeless little boys she had had to deal with.
"No, miss."
"No brothers or sisters, no uncles or aunts?"
"No, miss."
"Didn't your mother ever take you to see anyone?"
"No, miss."
"Well, then, didn't anyone ever come to see her?"
"No, miss."
To the point she was trying to reach she went round by another way. Where did they live? How long had they lived there? Where had they lived before that? How long had they lived in that place? He answered to the best of his recollection, but when it came to their flittings from tenement to tenement, and from town to town, his recollection didn't take him very far. Miss Honiton soon understood that she might as well question a bird as to its migrations.
For a minute she said nothing, turning over in her mind the various ways of breaking her painful news, when he himself asked, suddenly: