“What do you say, Dick? A baby—two days old?”
“Two days,” returned Dick. “I’d show him to you but for fear o’ waking mother.”
“He came here the night afore last, he did, while we was all asleep upstairs,” interposed the younger of the little girls, Jessy. “Mr. Cole brought him in his pocket: father said so.”
“’Twasn’t the night afore last,” corrected ‘Liza. “’Twas the night afore that.”
Poor, pale, pinched faces, with never a smile on any one of them! Nothing takes the spirit out of children like long-continued famine.
Stepping across, I looked down at Mrs. Hoar. Her eyes were half open as if she were in a state of stupor. I don’t think she knew me: I’m not sure she even saw me. The face was fearfully thin and hollow, and white as death.
“Wouldn’t mother be better upstairs, Dick?”
“She’s here ’cause o’ the fire,” returned Dick, gently dropping on a bit of coal the size of a marble. “There ain’t no bed up there, neither; they’ve brought it down.”
The “bed” looked like a sack of shavings. From my heart I don’t believe it was anything else. At that moment, the door opened and a woman came in; a neighbour, I suppose; her clothes very thin.
“It’s Mrs. Watts,” said Dick.