“‘E died, ma’am, last month. I’d put him with a woman in the country. She was highly recommended to me. Very highly recommended she was, and I paid her six shillings a week. But I think she must ‘ave done something she shouldn’t.”
“Oh, Maggie, you don’t mean she was cruel to him?”
“No, ma’am. She was very fond of him. Everybody was fond of Baby. But whether it was the food she gave him or what, ‘e was that wasted you wouldn’t have known him. You remember what he was like when he was here.”
“I remember.”
She remembered. She remembered. Fat and round in his white shawl and knitted cap when Maggie carried him down the garden path.
“I should think she’d a done something, shouldn’t you, ma’am?”
She thought: No. No. It was I who did it when I sent him away.
“I don’t know, Maggie. I’m afraid it’s been very terrible for you.”
“Yes, ma’am.... I wondered whether you’d give me another trial, ma’am.”
“Are you quite sure you want to come to me, Maggie?”