"Tell us what she's like, sir, and how she was dressed—though that ain't much use. She'll be all different by this time."
The words shot a keener pang to my heart than it had yet felt. My darling stripped of her nice clothes, and covered with dirty, perhaps infected garments. But it was no time to give way to feeling.
My husband repeated to the men the description he had given the police, loud enough for the whole room to hear; and the women in particular, Miss Clare told me afterwards, caught it up with remarkable accuracy. They would not have done so, she said, but that their feelings were touched.
"Tell them also, please, Mr. Percivale, about the child Mrs. Percivale's father and mother found and brought up. That may have something to do with this."
My husband told them all the story; adding that the mother of the child might have found out who we were, and taken ours as a pledge for the recovery of her own.
Here one of the women spoke.
"That dark woman you took in one night—two years ago, miss—she say something. I was astin' of her in the mornin' what her trouble was, for that trouble she had on her mind was plain to see, and she come over something, half-way like, about losin' of a child; but whether it were dead, or strayed, or stolen, or what, I couldn't tell; and no more, I believe, she wanted me to."
Here another woman spoke.
"I'm 'most sure I saw her—the same woman—two days ago, and no furrer off than Gower Street," she said. "You're too good by half, miss," she went on, "to the likes of sich. They ain't none of them respectable."
"Perhaps you'll see some good come out of it before long," said Miss Clare in reply.