“Who is my mother?”
“Why—er—er—why, mother, you know,” replied Tim.
The child shook her head thoughtfully, and now speaking, now stopping to rub at the bright metal, said—
“No, no! not her—not her! My own—my own dear mother could not, would not beat me so. I think it must be some one who comes when I’m half asleep, and I can see her blue eyes, and feel her long curls round my face when she kisses me, and then it is that I wake up; and,” she continued dreamily, “I’m not sure whether she does come, for she is not there then, and when I whisper, no one answers; and do you know whether she comes, or whether I dream she does, that must be my mother, for no one else would come and kiss me like that.”
“Why, I do,” remonstrated Tim, “lots o’ times.”
“Yes, yes! you do!” said the child, smiling, “but I know when it’s you, and I can’t help thinking—”
“Here, I say,” exclaimed Tim, “this isn’t catechism. This won’t do, my pretty, you mustn’t talk like that. Now, then, go on,—‘Succour my father’—”
“Succour—succour,” continued the child, “my father and mother. Is she gone to heaven, and does she come to look at me in the night, and kiss me? I don’t think that she would whip me so, and—and—oh! pray don’t beat me for it. I can’t help it. Oh! I can’t help it,” and then once again, the little thin hands were pressed upon the quivering lips to thrust back the bitter heart-wrung wail that would make itself heard. No child’s cry; but the moaning of a bruised heart, forced and rendered premature in its feelings by the long course of cruelty to which it had been subjected. A stranger might have listened, and then have gone away believing that his feelings had been moved to pity by the anguished utterances of a woman in distress.
Tim hopped from his board, half bewildered, and quite in trouble, to kiss and caress the child, smoothing her hair, patting her cheeks, and holding her tightly to his breast.
“Come, my pretty,” he whispered, “you mustn’t, you know. It does hurt me so, and ain’t I as good as a father? And didn’t you promise me as you’d love me very, very much? And now you’re raining down tears, and melting all the sugar out of a fellow’s nature till you’ll make him cross as—Polish away, my pretty.”