But what ailed the poor little boy himself? His head ached, his pulse throbbed as he lay with the scanty blankets covering him; he shivered so violently that he almost feared he should wake Sarah Ann. Yes, he, not the baby, had taken cold. He, not the baby, was going to have brownchitis or that hinflammation which he dreaded.
The mischief had been done when he tore off his jacket and ran home, through the pitiless sleet, in his ragged shirt-sleeves. Well, he was glad it was not Sairey Ann, and mother would soon be home now, and find her baby well, and not starved, and perhaps she would praise him a little bit, and tell him he was a good boy. He had certainly tried to be a good boy.
All through the night—while his chest ached and ached, and his breath became more and more difficult, and the baby slumbered on, with her little downy head against his breast—he kept wondering, in a confused sort of way, what his mother would say to him, and if the Our Father, in the only prayer he ever knew, was anything like the father who had been cruel, and who had run away from him and his mother a year ago.
All his thoughts, however, were very vague, and as the morning broke, and his suffering grew worse, he was too ill to think at all.
CHAPTER VI.
THE END OF HIS TROUBLES.
Tom Jones, having secured the baby's comforter, the thin Paisley shawl, and the little winsey frock, ran as fast as he could to a pawnbroker's hard by.
There he received a shilling on the articles, and with this shilling jingling pleasantly in his pocket he entered an eating-house which he knew, and prepared to enjoy some pea pudding and pork.