One windy, wild, bright March morning he was walking up to the hospital as usual from his lodgings in Kennington. He looked as cheerful as the morning itself as he strode along with an oak stick in his hand, and under his arm two or three shiny black note-books with red edges. Opposite St Thomas's Street he paused to watch for a favourable moment in which to effect a crossing; and before he had time to plunge into the chaos of vans, omnibuses, cabs, carriages, trucks, barrows and blasphemy, the touch of a hand on his arm made him turn sharply round. It was his foster-mother, with a basket on her arm, her attire several shades shabbier than he had been used to see it, and her worn face lighted up with pleasure at meeting him.
'Eh, but Ah'm glad to see thi face, my lad,' she said earnestly, as he turned and shook her hand heartily. 'I thowt as there was na more nor two pair o' shoulders like these, and I know'd it was thee or Rowley the minute Ah seed thee.'
The familiar North-country sing-song accent sent a momentary pain through the young man's heart as he answered,—
'I'm awfully glad to see you again; but what in the name of fortune are you doing here?'
'There's na fortune in't but bad fortune, lad,' she answered; 'tha know'd well enough when thee and Rowley fell out as Thornsett wouldn't be a home for any o' us for long.'
There was no reproach in her tone. Her speech was only a plain statement of fact.
'But what made you come to London?'
'T' master thowt as there'd be a big lot o' work to be gotten here, seeing as London be such a big place. Oh, but it is big, Master Dick. Ah'm getting a bit used to it now, but when first we came here the bigness and the din of it used to get into my head like, till times Ah felt a'most daft wi' it.'
By this time he had piloted her across, and they were walking side by side towards London Bridge, whither she told him she was bound.