“Baby! Then the whole family of you, father, mother, and all, were taken to prison!”
“No, ma’am; my fathers and my mothers were taken up into the dome of the angels.”—What with hunger and sleepiness, Clare was talking like a child.—“I haven’t any father and mother in this world. I have two fathers and two mothers up there, and one mother in this world. She’s the mother of the wild beasts.”
The old lady began to doubt the boy’s sanity, but she went on questioning him.
“How did you have a baby with you, then?”
“The baby was my own, ma’am. I took her out of the water-butt.”
Once more Clare had to tell his story—from the time, that is, when his adoptive father and mother died. He told it in such a simple matter-of-fact way, yet with such quaint remarks, from their very simplicity difficult to understand, that, if the old lady, for all her trying, was not able quite to believe his tale, it was because she doubted whether the boy was not one of God’s innocents, with an angel-haunted brain.
“And what’s become of Tommy?” she asked.
“He’s in the same workhouse with baby. I’m very glad; for what I should have done with Tommy, and nothing to give him to eat, I can’t think. He would have been sure to steal! I couldn’t have kept him from it!”
“You must be more careful of your company.”
“Please, ma’am, I was very careful of Tommy. He had the best company I could give him: I did try to be better for Tommy’s sake. But my trying wasn’t much use to Tommy, so long as he wouldn’t try! He was a little better, though, I think; and if I had him now, and could give him plenty to eat, and had baby as well as Abdiel to help me, we might make something of Tommy, I think.—You think so—don’t you, Abdiel?”