"Why, Mr. Corney!" exclaimed Bert. "What is the matter? Are you ill?"
"No, no, boy, I'm all right. There is nothing the matter with me. I've had a shock, that is all. How are you?"
"Oh, I am getting on very well. I still have to wear the bandages, you see. When they are taken off, I shall be allowed to go away; but I don't want to go. I like being here."
"Yes, yes," said the old man mournfully, "you might be in a worse place. There are many worse places in the world than this."
"I know there are," said Bert; "but, Mr. Corney, I wish you would tell me what is the matter. I am sure you are in trouble."
"So I am, Bert, so I am," said the old man, shaking his head; "there's no denying it; but it won't make it better to talk of it."
But Bert could not be satisfied without knowing his friend's trouble, and it may be that Mr. Corney was secretly longing for sympathy, for the boy soon won his confidence.
"Bert," he said, "I've found my sister; but I've found her in such a way that I could almost wish I had not found her. But God forbid that I should say that! No, let me rather thank God that I have found her; but it's a bitter disappointment, an awful grief, to find her such an one as she is."
"How did you find her, Mr. Corney?" asked Bert, after a pause so long that he feared the old man was not going to tell him any more.
"Oh," groaned Mr. Corney, "it's a shame even to speak of it! But it was like this. It was very hot last evening, and I went out for a bit of a stroll. I had got into one of the bigger streets, when I saw a crowd at a corner near a public-house. I went across to see what had happened, and there was a woman leaning against the railings—drunk. I never can bear to see a drunken woman. It's bad enough for a man to get drunk; but for a woman, it's an awful fall. Well, when I came to look at her, this was the very woman I saw on Jubilee Day—the one that was taken away on a stretcher, you know."