The porter at the workhouse informed him it was not the day for seeing the inmates; but the tall policeman had given Clare a hint, and he requested to see the matron. After much demur and much entreaty, the man went and told the matron. She, knowing the story of the baby, wanted to see Clare, and was so much pleased with his manners and looks, that his sad clothes pleaded for and not against him. She took him at once to the room where the baby was with many more, telling him he must prove she was his by picking her out. It was not wonderful that Clare, who knew the faces of animals so well, should know his own baby the moment he saw her, notwithstanding that she was decently clothed, and had already improved in appearance. But the nurses declared they had never before seen a man, not to say a boy, who could tell one baby from another.
“Why,” rejoined Clare, “my dog Abdiel could pick out the baby he was nurse to!”
“Ah, but he’s a dog!”
“And I’m a boy!” said Clare.
He descried her on the lap of an old woman, seeming to him very old, who was at the head of the nursery-department. Old as she was, however, she had a keen eye, and a handsome countenance, with a quantity of white hair. Unlike the rest of the women, though not far removed from them socially, she knew several languages, so far as to read and enjoy books in them. Now and then a great woman may be found in a workhouse, like a first folio of Shakspere on a bookstall, among—oh, such companions!
“Let me take her,” said Clare modestly, holding out his hands for the baby.
“Are you sure you will not let her drop?”
“Why, ma’am,” answered Clare, “she’s my own baby! It was I took her out of the water-butt! I washed and fed her every day!—not that I could do it so well as you, ma’am!”
She gave him the baby, and watched him with the eye of a seeress, for she had a wonderful insight into character, and that is one of the roots of prophecy.
“You are a good and true lad,” she said at length, “and a hard success lies before you. I don’t know what you will come to, but, with those eyes, and that forehead, and those hands, if you come to anything but good, you will be terribly to blame.”