“I believe you, Jack, I believe you; but you young people can’t feel as an old woman like I do. There is but one thing I love in the world, Jack, now, and that’s you; and when I get weary of waiting for that one thing, and it don’t come, Jack, it does make a poor old woman like me a little cross for the time.”
I was touched with this last speech of old Nanny’s, who had never shown me any such a decided mark of kindness before. “Mother,” said I, “depend upon it, whenever I return to Greenwich, you shall be the first person that I come to see after I have been to my mother’s.”
“That’s kind, Jack, and you keep your promise always. Now sit down; you don’t want to go away already, do you?”
“No, mother, I came to spend the whole morning with you.”
“Well, then, sit down—take care, Jack, you’ll knock down that bottle. Now tell me, what do you intend to do with your hundred pounds?”
“I have settled that already, mother. I have given it away.”
“Already! Why, the boy has one hundred pounds given him on the morning, and he gives it away before night. Mercy on us! who would ever think of leaving you any money?”
“No one, mother; and I never expect any except what I earn.”
“Why, Jack, do you know how much one hundred pounds is?”
“I think so.”