“Well, Eliza!”
She got up, sank into a chair, flung her apron up to her face, and burst into tears. I suppose it was at the sight of me. Not knowing what to say to that, I pulled the little girls’ ears and then sat down on the floor by Dicky. He began to cry.
“Oh come, Dick, don’t; you’ll soon be better. Face smarts, does it?”
“I never thought to meet you like this, Master Johnny,” said Eliza, getting up and speaking through her tears. “’Twas hunger made him do it, sir; nothing else. The poor little things be so famished at times it a’most takes the sense out of ’em.”
“Yes, I am sure it was nothing else. Look up, Dick. Don’t cry like that.” One would have thought the boy was going into hysterics.
I had an apple in my pocket and gave it to him. He kept it in his hand for some time, and then began to eat it ravenously, sobbing now and then. The left arm, the broken one, lay across him, bound up in splints.
“I didn’t mean to steal the bun,” he whispered, looking up at me through his tears. “I’d ha’ give Mrs. Ford the first ha’penny for it that I’d ever got. I was a-hungered, I was. We be always a-hungered now.”
“It is hard times with you, I am afraid, Eliza,” I said, standing by her.
Opening her mouth to answer, a sob caught her breath, and she put her hand to her side, as if in pain. Her poor face, naturally patient and meek, was worn, and had a bright hectic spot upon it. Eliza used to be very pretty, and was young-looking still, with smooth brown hair, and mild grey eyes: she looked very haggard now and less tidy. But, as to being tidy, how can folk be that, when all their gowns worth a crown are hanging up at the pawnbroker’s?
“It’s dreadful times, Master Johnny. It’s times that frighten me. Worse than all, I can’t see when it is to end, and what the end is to be.”