‘I’m his poor mother, sir,’—sobbed Mrs Nubbles, curtseying humbly, ‘and this is his brother, sir. Oh dear me, dear me!’
‘Well!’ replied the turnkey, folding his paper on his knee, so as to get with greater convenience at the top of the next column. ‘It can’t be helped you know. He ain’t the only one in the same fix. You mustn’t make a noise about it!’
With that he went on reading. The man was not unnaturally cruel or hard-hearted. He had come to look upon felony as a kind of disorder, like the scarlet fever or erysipelas: some people had it—some hadn’t—just as it might be.
‘Oh! my darling Kit,’ said his mother, whom Barbara’s mother had charitably relieved of the baby, ‘that I should see my poor boy here!’
‘You don’t believe that I did what they accuse me of, mother dear?’ cried Kit, in a choking voice.
‘I believe it!’ exclaimed the poor woman, ‘I that never knew you tell a lie, or do a bad action from your cradle—that have never had a moment’s sorrow on your account, except it was the poor meals that you have taken with such good humour and content, that I forgot how little there was, when I thought how kind and thoughtful you were, though you were but a child!—I believe it of the son that’s been a comfort to me from the hour of his birth until this time, and that I never laid down one night in anger with! I believe it of you Kit!—’
‘Why then, thank God!’ said Kit, clutching the bars with an earnestness that shook them, ‘and I can bear it, mother! Come what may, I shall always have one drop of happiness in my heart when I think that you said that.’
At this the poor woman fell a-crying again, and Barbara’s mother too. And little Jacob, whose disjointed thoughts had by this time resolved themselves into a pretty distinct impression that Kit couldn’t go out for a walk if he wanted, and that there were no birds, lions, tigers or other natural curiosities behind those bars—nothing indeed, but a caged brother—added his tears to theirs with as little noise as possible.
Kit’s mother, drying her eyes (and moistening them, poor soul, more than she dried them), now took from the ground a small basket, and submissively addressed herself to the turnkey, saying, would he please to listen to her for a minute? The turnkey, being in the very crisis and passion of a joke, motioned to her with his hand to keep silent one minute longer, for her life. Nor did he remove his hand into its former posture, but kept it in the same warning attitude until he had finished the paragraph, when he paused for a few seconds, with a smile upon his face, as who should say ‘this editor is a comical blade—a funny dog,’ and then asked her what she wanted.
‘I have brought him a little something to eat,’ said the good woman. ‘If you please, Sir, might he have it?’