Dick's face was a study, as he held the puppy closely in his arms and looked up eagerly at Paddy.
"Do you mean that the Fowleys are not relations, and that I'm not beholden to stay there?"
"No relations in the world, me boy; and if I was you, I'd be off some fine morning and give 'em the slip. Your poor father was only a lodger there, after your mother died, and they took all he had and kept you, so to say, out of charity. Of course you was too young to know any different. I was well acquainted with your father and your uncle, years agone, but he had got work at Ironboro' long before your father died."
"And which is the way to Ironboro', and what is a fitter?"
"Ironboro'? Oh that's a hundred and fifty miles off, way up in the north, and you couldn't walk it yet, all alone. But some day—— And a fitter is a man who has learned his trade making engines, and can pull them to pieces, and put them together again as easy as I can fire these stoke holes."
Dick gently put the puppy back into the basket and straightened himself, like one taking a great resolve.
"Thank you, Paddy, ever so much for telling me, and if you'll only keep Pat till I can go, I'll save him a bit of my dinner every day."
"Indade and you won't, then, seein' as your dinner's none too hearty, judging by the leanness of your bones. No, I've no chick nor child of me own, and shure I can let the cratur alone enough to pay the milkman's bill for this little mite. You'll have to bring the dinner every day this week, and you'll see he'll get on fine in that time."
Dick gave his friend a hug of gratitude, and kissed Pat's silky head before he went away. And he hurried home and washed the dinner things, and cleared up the untidy kitchen like one in a dream. Sometimes it seemed to Dick that all his work went for nothing at all, for Mrs. Fowley always muddled things as soon as she came in.
She might have kept the house well on her husband's wages, but a large slice went to the "Blue Dragon," and out of the remainder she never had any left by the middle of the week. And she never did any work that could possibly be handed over to Dick, and the boy was in very truth the "slavey" they called him, and he rarely had enough to eat. Now she told him that he must stay away from school that afternoon and mind the baby, as she had business down the road at a neighbour's. And slipping a black bottle under her apron, she went out, and Susy, the youngest but one, followed her, leaving the baby fretting in the old wooden box that served as cradle.