Leaving him standing there, we went up to the top room. I tapped at the door, and a little shrill voice inside said, “We are locked in. Mrs. Blinder’s got the key!”
I applied the key on hearing this and opened the door. In a poor room with a sloping ceiling and containing very little furniture was a mite of a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and hushing a heavy child of eighteen months. There was no fire, though the weather was cold; both children were wrapped in some poor shawls and tippets as a substitute. Their clothing was not so warm, however, but that their noses looked red and pinched and their small figures shrunken as the boy walked up and down nursing and hushing the child with its head on his shoulder.
“Who has locked you up here alone?” we naturally asked.
“Charley,” said the boy, standing still to gaze at us.
“Is Charley your brother?”
“No. She’s my sister, Charlotte. Father called her Charley.”
“Are there any more of you besides Charley?”
“Me,” said the boy, “and Emma,” patting the limp bonnet of the child he was nursing. “And Charley.”
“Where is Charley now?”
“Out a-washing,” said the boy, beginning to walk up and down again and taking the nankeen bonnet much too near the bedstead by trying to gaze at us at the same time.