"Shan't love her," he had said, with a thrusting of his head towards the door which Mrs. Bishop had just closed.
"And you'll say prayers every night and every morning?"
"Yes, mummy."
"And you'll say, 'God help mummy'"
"Will I pray for father?"
She took a deep breath as she looked above his head. He was too young to feel the weight of the pause. It meant nothing to him. He thought she had not heard.
"Will I pray for father?" he repeated.
"Yes," she said slowly; "pray for father, pray for him first, and then mummy, just before you go to sleep. God bless you, my little darling—" and in the fierce blinding passion which a mother alone can understand, she caught him again in her arms and crushed his yielding little body to her heart.
Such was the arrival of Master Maurice Priestly at No. 17, Wyatt Street.
When she arrived, some three weeks after this event, Sally found a little fair-haired boy with sad blue eyes whom at night, in the room next to hers, she sometimes heard crying. She had mentioned this to her mother.