“I am not going home,” said the little Earl, and there was a something in the way he spoke that silenced Dick’s tongue,—which he would have called his clapper.
“What in the world be the little swell arter?” thought Dick.
Bertie meanwhile, with some awe and anxiety, was watching the livid face of the sick woman: he had never seen illness or death, but it seemed to him that she was very ill indeed.
“Are you not anxious about your mother?” he asked of the rough boy.
“Yes,” said Dick, sulkily, with the water coming in his eyes. “Dad’s in the lock-up: that’s wuss still, young sir.”
“Not worse than death,” said Bertie, solemnly. “He will come back.”
“Oh, she’ll come round with a drop of gin and a sup of broth,” said Dick, confidently. “’Tis all hunger and frettin’, hers is.”
“I am glad I gave my shoes,” thought Bertie. Then there was a long silence, broken only by the hissing of the green brambles on the fire and the yelps of the baby.
“Maybe, sir,” said Dick, after a little, “you’d put the saucepan on? I can’t move with this here leg. If you’d pit some water out o’ kittle in him, he’ll be ready for cookin’ when the vittles come.”
“I will do that,” said Bertie, cheerfully, and he set the saucepan on by lifting it with both hands: it was very black, and its crock came off on his knickerbockers. Then, by Dick’s directions, he found a pair of old wooden bellows, and blew on the sticks and sods; but this he managed so ill that Dick wriggled himself along the floor closer to the fire and did it himself.