'Ah, no, sir,' said the young man, with a deep sigh, 'that is not the thing. He is used enough to eat afore company. Time was he'd have come down for me before ever so many fine folks, and have eat his crumbs out of my hand at my first call; but, poor fellow! it's not his fault now. He does not know me now, sir, since my accident, because of this great black patch.'
The young man put his hand to his right eye, which was covered with a huge black patch. Ben asked what accident he meant; and the lad told him that, but a few weeks ago, he had lost the sight of his eye by the stroke of a stone, which reached him as he was passing under the rocks at Clifton, unluckily when the workmen were blasting.
'I don't mind so much for myself, sir,' said the lad; 'but I can't work so well now, as I used to do before my accident, for my old mother, who has had a stroke of the palsy; and I've a many little brothers and sisters not well able yet to get their own livelihood, though they be as willing as willing can be.'
'Where does your mother live?' said Mr. Gresham.
'Hard by, sir, just close to the church here. It was her that always had the showing of it to strangers, till she lost the use of her poor limbs.'
'Shall we, may we, uncle, go that way? This is the house, is it not?' said Ben, when they went out of the cathedral.
They went into the house. It was rather a hovel than a house; but, poor as it was, it was as neat as misery could make it. The old woman was sitting up in her wretched bed, winding worsted; four meagre, ill-clothed, pale children were all busy, some of them sticking pins in paper for the pin-maker, and others sorting rags for the paper-maker.
'What a horrid place it is!' said Hal, sighing; 'I did not know there were such shocking places in the world. I've often seen terrible-looking, tumble-down places, as we drove through the town in mother's carriage; but then I did not know who lived in them, and I never saw the inside of any of them. It is very dreadful, indeed, to think that people are forced to live in this way. I wish mother would send me some more pocket-money, that I might do something for them. I had half a crown; but,' continued he, feeling in his pockets, 'I'm afraid I spent the last shilling of it this morning upon those cakes that made me sick. I wish I had my shilling now; I'd give it to these poor people.'
Ben, though he was all this time silent, was as sorry as his talkative cousin for all these poor people. But there was some difference between the sorrow of these two boys.
Hal, after he was again seated in the hackney-coach, and had rattled through the busy streets of Bristol for a few minutes, quite forgot the spectacle of misery which he had seen, and the gay shops in Wine Street and the idea of his green and white uniform wholly occupied his imagination.