“I’ve often wondered whether if ever I’d had a father, he’d ha’ been like the doctor, Miss. Ain’t yer proud on him?”
“Yes, Bob, yes,” she cried, laying her hand upon the boy’s shoulder, while a strange sensation of depression, as of impending trouble, came over her, making her forget everything, and hardly notice the next act of the boy.
It is hardly fair to say that Bob’s hands were dirty, but they were very coarse in grain, and discoloured, the nails were worn down, and the fingers were blue with chilblains where they were not red with the chaps which roughened them; and those were the hands which took hold of Rich’s and held it for a few moments against the boy’s cheek; while he rubbed the said cheek softly against the smooth palm, his bright eyes looking up at her as a spaniel might at its mistress. In fact, there was something dog-like and fawning in the ways of the lad, till the hand was drawn away.
“So’m I proud on him, Miss. He is a good ’un. For it’s like ’evin being here. Why, I’ve been here two years now, and he never kicked me once.”
“And used you to be kicked before you came here, Bob?” said Rich, feeling amused, in spite of herself, at the boy’s estimate of true happiness.
“Kicked, Miss? Ha, ha, ha! Why, it was ’most all kicks when it warn’t pots. Old woman never kicked me; but when she’d had a drop, and couldn’t get no more, she was allus cross, and then she’d hit you with what come first—pewter pot, poker, anything, if you didn’t get out of the way.”
Rich’s brow contracted, and then for the moment the pain neutralised that of the mind.
“But she didn’t often hit me,” said Bob, grinning. “I used to get too sharp for her; and she didn’t mean no harm. Want me to do anything, Miss?”
“No, Bob, no,” said Rich, turning away to the shelves, where the bottles stood as in a chemist’s shop. “Poor boy! and the place is to him like heaven!” she thought.
“Want some physic, Miss?” said the boy excitedly; “which on ’em? I knows ’most all on ’em now.”