"I know nothin' about it!" said Sandy. "Tell me all you know."
"Mother knows more than I do," he replied; "let us make haste to her."
It was not long before they reached the house, which lay at the back of a small chapel, and in a corner of a little square grave-yard, where the grass grew rank and dark over the mounds, in spite of the smoke and soot falling upon it from the chimneys around. There was no other dwelling in the yard, but the blank high walls of some workshops enclosed it. Nor was there any symptom of the turf having been dug up for years, and the head-stones of the graves were black with smoke. All was quiet, and dark, and gloomy the sun could hardly shine into it at midday, and now it was evening. But it was very peaceful and still, hushed away from the great turmoil and bustle of the city, though it lay in the very heart of it.
Sandy lowered his voice when they turned into the grave-yard, and crossed it by a path paved with flat stones, which bore the names of persons long since dead and forgotten.
At the back of this grave-yard, in a corner where a sharp eye might by chance see it from the street, stood a little low old-fashioned house of two storeys, if the upper floor could be called a storey, when it was not more than seven feet high in the pitch of the roof, with two dormer windows in the front. On the ground-floor there was a large shop window, with a very dingy hatchment in the centre, and above it a bunch of funeral plumes, brown with age. On one side of the hatchment hung a card, framed in black, with "Funerals performed!" on it. Whilst in the opposite pane was another card, displaying the words, "Pinking done here."
One of the three large panes had been broken, and a stiff placard was pasted over it, to keep out the wind and rain. The old house looked as if it were skulking in the corner of the grave-yard to hide its poverty and decay; keeping out of sight as much as it could, yet forced to show itself a little, that those who dwelt in it might have a chance of earning a scanty living.
"This is mother," said John Shafto.
John Shafto's crutches seemed to tap more loudly on these flat gravestones than on the common flags in the streets; and before he and Sandy reached the house, the shop door was opened from within. A rosy, cheerful, motherly-looking woman, with blue ribbons in her cap, stood in the doorway as they drew near to it. So strange and odd and out of place she seemed beside the broken window and gloomy hatchment, that even Sandy felt a strange sensation of surprise.
Her voice, too, when she said, "Johnny!" was cheerful, and as she kissed the lame boy fondly, Sandy stood by, staring at her with wide-open eyes.