"Hem!" coughed the turnkey. "O yes, he was there, sometimes."
"Is he sorry not to be there now?"
"N—not particular," said the turnkey.
"Nor any of the people?" she asked, glancing at the listless crowd within. "O are you quite sure and certain, Bob?"
At this point, Bob gave in and changed the subject to candy. But after this chat, the turnkey and little Amy would go out on his free Sunday afternoons to some meadows or green lanes, and she would pick grass and flowers to bring home, while he smoked his pipe; and then they would go to some tea-gardens for shrimps and tea and other delicacies, and would come back hand in hand, unless she was very tired and had fallen asleep on his shoulder.
When Amy was only eight years old, her mother died; and the poor father was more helpless and broken-down than ever, and as Fanny was a careless child and Edward idle, the little one, who had the bravest and truest heart, was led by her love and unselfishness to be the little mother of the forlorn family, and struggled to get some little education for herself and her brother and sister.
At first, such a baby could do little more than sit with her father, deserting her livelier place by the high fender, and quietly watching him. But this made her so far necessary to him that he became accustomed to her, and began to be sensible of missing her when she was not there. Through this little gate, she passed out of her childhood into the care-laden world.
What her pitiful look saw, at that early time, in her father, in her sister, in her brother, in the jail; how much or how little of the wretched truth it pleased God to make plain to her, lies hidden with many mysteries. It is enough that she was inspired to be something which was not what the rest were, and to be that something, different and laborious, for the sake of the rest. Inspired? Yes. Shall we speak of a poet or a priest, and not of the heart impelled by love and self-devotion to the lowliest work in the lowliest way of life?
The family stayed so long in the prison that the old man came to be known as "The Father of the Marshalsea;" and little Amy, who had never known any other home, as "The Child of the Marshalsea."
At thirteen she could read and keep accounts—that is, could put down in words and figures how much the bare necessaries that they wanted would cost, and how much less they had to buy them with. She had been, by snatches of a few weeks at a time, to an evening school outside, and got her sister and brother sent to day-schools from time to time during three or four years. There was no teaching for any of them at home; but she knew well—no one better—that a man so broken as to be the Father of the Marshalsea, could be no father to his own children.