‘Father says I must go and beg,’ she answered, crying more bitterly, ‘and I’m frightened, and it’s so bitter cold. But we must pay our rent, he says, or be turned out, and he doesn’t know where to go to, and is very ill, coughin’ ever so. We owe for three weeks now, that’s nine shillings, and I don’t know where I’m to beg for nine shillings.’
‘There’s all the coppers I’ve got,’ said Sam putting three or four pence in her hand, and hurrying on with Ann and Johnny, whilst the girl pattered after them, with her bare feet tingling in the snow. Ann did not speak again till they reached the school, but once or twice she looked back and saw the little ragged figure following them. There was no one in the school room except themselves and the gentleman who was ready to receive their payment and give them the ticket for buying clothes to the value of ten shillings and sixpence. But before he could write out the ticket Ann glanced round, and saw a thin, care-worn little face peering in through the window.
‘Oh, Sam,’ she cried, ‘we don’t want it so badly after all, and I think if it belonged to Him, Jesus Christ, he would give it to the poor man up in the attic to pay his rent with. Don’t you think he would?’
‘But it’s Johnny’s little fortune,’ said Sam, ‘and we should lose one and sixpence if we took it out for that.’
‘Johnny ’ud be glad to give it to poor little Bell?’ asked Ann, with her hand on the boy’s shoulder.
‘Yes, mother, for little Bell,’ he said readily.
‘Johnny’s clothes are warm, if they’re shabby,’ pursued Ann, ‘and there’s that poor little creature in rags, and barefoot. My heart aches for her, Sam. If it were our boy, and they’d nine shillings they didn’t want badly, what should we like them to do?’
‘Well, Ann, I give up,’ he said; ‘after all, it’s your savings, not mine.’
Still he was not quite satisfied about it. That man in the attic was very probably a drunken vagabond, and deserved to be turned out for not paying his rent. To be sure he had been a tenant nearly a year, and had been quiet enough, meddling with nobody, and not putting himself in anybody’s way. Sam had not seen him above two or three times, and then he had only just caught sight of a thin, stooping figure, with a shabby old coat buttoned up to the throat, as if the man had no shirt to wear. Anyhow it was Ann’s business, and if any wife deserved to have her own way in a thing like this, it was his wife.
Ann picked up the money, which was counted out to her, with a pleasant smile upon her face. It was snowing very fast when they opened the school-room door; but there was little Bell still, with her face pressed against the window and one foot drawn up out of the snow to keep it warmer. Ann called to her, and she ran quickly towards them.