But she had got a great fright, and gazed long and greedily at her treasure.
It was plain that if she wanted to keep little Roy, she must move away from here as fast as possible. She could scarcely find a cheaper home, but be that as it may she dare not stay so near to Faith. Presently, tired out, she sank down on the floor; she still trembled at the nearness of the danger, but she also felt disappointment. The baby whom she considered her own baby now was so beautiful, so grand, so fine and strong, so unlike any other child she had ever looked at, that she had often pictured to herself his high birth. He might, for aught she knew, be the son of a prince. Any prince in the land would be proud of him. And Hannah had delighted herself with the thought that this child, of perhaps Royalty, was happy and at home with such a woman as she—a woman at whom all respectable folks would point a finger of scorn; but yet whom the pure and innocent little child loved.
But he was of no high birth. He was only a son of the people after all. Many, many degrees above herself in respectability it was true, but still a child of the vast multitude. Her last scruple at keeping him vanished at this fact. He would lose nothing by remaining with her, and for his sake she would, she could, become good.
Chapter Twelve.
A week had passed away since Roy was lost. Sunday came round again, finding Faith no longer in her neat and comfortable home, but a gutter child, dressed as badly, and in quite as great rags, as the worst-looking child around her. Meg was her companion and staunch friend, but it seemed no hardship in Meg’s eyes to counsel Faith to pawn her neat and good clothes, and to receive in exchange garments in which her father would scarcely recognise her. The money received for the clothes had enabled the little girls to live for some days; and then they had sold matches and flowers, and in one way and another had managed to keep life within them. Faith, though really unaccustomed to any hardship, had borne up bravely. The hope with which she had awakened each morning that surely before the evening they would find Roy, had supported her spirits; but each night as it came, with its invariable disappointment, until even Meg began to own that she was puzzled as to what had become of the child, brought an added weight to Faith’s heart. She was more than ever determined not to go home again without her little brother. But as she lay down on her musty bed on Saturday evening in the wretched cellar where she and Meg had found for themselves quarters, hope had vanished to a very low ebb indeed.
Sunday morning dawned. It would be a whole week to-day since she last had seen her darling little Roy. She felt very, very miserable. No, hope would not visit her heart that day, and as she lay in bed watching Meg putting on her clothes, the tears rolled down her pale cheeks, and dark and sceptical thoughts filled her mind. When Meg noticed her tears, she spoke.
“It’s all a lie, Meg; it’s all a big, big lie.”
“Wot’s a lie,” asked Meg, stopping in her dressing, and staring at Faith.