[Illustration: THE LITTLE STRANGER.]
But there was no symptom of anybody coming to claim the little girl, who stood very quietly at his side, one hand holding the dog fast by his ear, and the other still lying in Oliver's grasp. The boy hopped on one foot across the narrow alley, and looked up with bright, eager eyes into the old man's face.
"I say," he said, earnestly, "don't you go to give her up to the p'lice. They'd take her to the house, and that's worse than the jail. Bless yer! they'd never take up a little thing like that to jail for a wagrant. You just give her to me, and I'll take care of her. It 'ud be easy enough to find victuals for such a pretty little thing as her. You give her up to me, I say."
"What's your name?" asked Oliver, clasping the little hand tighter, "and where do you come from?"
"From nowhere particular," answered the boy; "and my name's Antony; Tony, for short. I used to have another name; mother told it me afore she died, but it's gone clean out o' my head. Tony I am, anyhow, and you can call me by it, if you choose."
"How old are you, Tony?" inquired Oliver, still lingering on the threshold, and looking up and down with his dim eyes.
"Bless yer! I don't know," replied Tony; "I weren't much bigger nor her when mother died, and I've found myself ever since. I never had any father."
"Found yourself!" repeated the old man, absently.
"Ah, it's not bad in the summer," said Tony, more earnestly than before: "and I could find for the little 'un easy enough. I sleep anywhere, in Covent Garden sometimes, and the parks—anywhere as the p'lice 'ill let me alone. You won't go to give her up to them p'lice, will you now, and she so pretty?"
He spoke in a beseeching tone, and old Oliver looked down upon him through his spectacles, with a closer survey than he had given to him before. The boy's face was pale and meagre, with an unboyish sharpness about it, though he did not seem more than nine or ten years old. His glittering eyes were filled with tears, and his colourless lips quivered. He wiped away the tears roughly upon the ragged sleeve of his jacket.