“Lor!” said Elizabeth, drying the boy’s hands with a series of gentle pats of the towel.
“And she says she knows the doctor does them sort o’ things on the sly, and that she shall take me away, and I don’t want to go.”
“Well, that didn’t make you fight, did it?”
“Yes, it did, now. I was going to tell you, on’y you’re in such a hurry, I went to take a letter for Miss Rich this morning, and as I was coming back, I meets mother, and she was asking me if I’d got any—”
“Money?” said Elizabeth promptly.
“Well, s’pose she did? If your mother warn’t dead, and hadn’t any money, p’raps if she met you in the street she’d ask you for money. Then how would you like it if four chaps come and said, ‘Hallo, Bottles, how many dead ’uns have you got in the dust-hole?’”
“Lor! did they say that?” said Elizabeth, squeezing the boy’s hand in the interest she took.
“I say don’t! You hurt. Here, cut up some o’ that dacklum and warm it, and stick it on. Then one on ’em said he looked through the keyhole one day, and saw the doctor sharpening his knife; and that set mother off crying, and she sets down on a doorstep, and goes on till she made me wild; and the more she cried and said she’d take me away the more they danced about, and called me body-snatcher.”
“How awful!” said Elizabeth, holding a strip of diachylon at the end of the scissors to warm at the fire.
“But I got the old woman off at last for twopence, and soon as she’d gone I was coming home, and I met them four again, and they began at me once more.”