Prin looked as if she would have liked to disown him; but she nodded in reply to the question.
The nurse moved nearer to the deplorable little figure, and spoke gently to him. "What will you do when your sister is gone, my little man? Will you be quite alone?"
Bert nodded.
The nurse looked troubled.
"I don't believe Mrs. Thornton understood that there was a brother," she said to herself. "Yet she has no home for boys, and she never sends them into the country."
Aloud she said, addressing Bert, "Would you not like to go to school with other little boys?"
"I do go to school," replied the boy. "I goes every day when we haven't measles. I'm in the fifth standard."
"Ah, that's well," said the nurse; "but would you not like to go to school altogether—to live in a school, I mean, with other boys, where they would be very kind to you and teach you a trade? I could write to Dr. Barnardo about you, if you liked, and I daresay he would take you into one of his homes."
Bert looked gravely at her. He had heard of Dr. Barnardo.
"And I should have to stay there always, and I should never see Prin," he said.