Sitting alone at the end of a bench was one old dame talking to herself in that vague, mumbling way common to many old women in our workhouses. As she rambled on in her talk she took up the cry:—
"Don't leave us, Mr. Crooks. For over seventy years I worked hard, Mr. Crooks, ever since I was eight years of age. Brought up a family of ten—two boys died in the wars, one drowned at sea. All the others left me long ago, and I don't know where they are. And my man was buried in 'eighty-nine—buried near the brickfields where we worked together thirty years before. And I kept myself outside for fifteen years, a lone old woman; and you helped me, Mr. Crooks, until I couldn't look after myself any longer, and then you made me comfortable here. So now I count the days between your coming to see us to cheer us up. So please don't leave us, Mr. Crooks. Don't—don't leave us, Mr. Crooks."
CHAPTER XXXIII "THE HAPPY WARRIOR"
A Cheerful Invalid and his Neighbours—The Starving Children in the Schools—Public Confidence in Crooks—Left Smiling.
Shortly afterwards he was laid low for two or three weeks, the victim of his old enemy, muscular rheumatism.
"Some of my ancestors must have been aristocrats," he used to tell his visitors good-naturedly from his sick bed in explanation of his recurring complaint.
As usual, the knocker at No. 81, Gough Street, knew no rest during his illness. Hundreds of people called to leave sympathetic little messages of goodwill. From Woolwich came a telegram from a party of children. An old bedridden man laboriously penned a letter, brought round by his aged wife, to say that Mr. Crooks might like to know that an "ole bloke as is pegging out fast" was thinking of him all day, and hoping he would soon get well.
This message cheered the invalid greatly, and he sent back a reply that renewed the old man's youth for weeks. For Crooks never lost his cheerfulness when lying bandaged in bed. He used to banter his wife and daughters, and his Labour colleagues in Parliament who came to visit him, until they had to hold their sides with laughter. His cheery doctor used to store up good stories for the invalid's delectation; but he always had to admit that Crooks could cap them all with better ones.