‘Excuse me,’ said the Mayor, ‘but the train has been signalled, and will be in in a few minutes.’
‘I am ready,’ said the lady, ‘but the child goes with me.’ The child seemed to nestle under her wing, as it were. He was frightened by the others.
‘You don’t mean that!’ ‘It is impossible!’ ‘What an idea!’ were the respective utterances of Mayor, Vicar, and Town Clerk, who simultaneously stepped back a step or two, as if doubting whether the lady were in full possession of her senses and were desirous to settle that question by a fuller survey a little further off. It is astonishing how great a sensation is produced in this Christian country when anyone tries to reduce Christianity to practice, to get it to talk modern English, to bring it down from the clouds, and to make it walk the streets. Just then the station bell rang.
‘Now, my little man, won’t you come along with me?’ said the actress to the lad. The little fellow opened his eyes—they were fine ones, and testified to the beating of a clear, undefiled, honest heart within—and joyfully assented.
‘Please get him a glass of milk, and some sandwiches and biscuits; put them on a tray,’ said the actress to the stolidly staring policeman, who was so overcome that, quite unconsciously, he found himself holding the ragged boy by the hand, and administering to him what little refreshment there was to take, and putting him in a first-class carriage, having first carefully covered him over with one of the actress’s shawl’s, that the shame of his nakedness might not appear, as if he were a young nobleman’s son.
‘They are rum critters, them actresses,’ said the policeman on recovering his dazed senses, as the train moved off, leaving the local dignitaries rather crestfallen, as they stood on the platform bidding adieux with their hats in their hands, and their uncovered, bald heads glistening in the summer sun.
‘They are indeed, Jenkins,’ said the Mayor, wiping his hot face with his pocket-handkerchief, evidently pleased that the actress had gone and relieved the town of one juvenile difficulty.
‘At any rate, to whom does this boy belong?’
‘Why, to Widow Brown, who is off on the tramp; but I don’t believe it is her boy, after all.’
‘Very likely not; but we are well rid of the lad and his mother, I think I know her.’