"Looka here!" exclaimed Jerry, half pleased, half ashamed. "I never had no one do that to me before, but then you seem somehow jest as though you were my own mother, so I suppose it's all right."
"And you never knew your mother?" asked the woman, regarding the boy with a wistful air.
She was a person who had evidently seen much sorrow.
Tall and thin, with gray hair tied tightly in a knot behind her head, poorly but respectably dressed, there was about her an unmistakable air of refinement, indicative of quite a different position in life from the one in which we now find her.
For surely the carpetless room, cheap table and chairs, the little stove and scanty display of common dishes through the half open closet door were indicative of anything but plenty and comfort, to say the least.
But they were miles and miles ahead of anything Jerry Buck was accustomed to, and he regarded them with an almost respectful air, as he replied:
"No, missus, I never had no father nor mother as I remember. I've always lived about the streets."
"But you must have some early remembrances," continued the woman. "Can't you tell me what they are?"
"Yes, some other time. Them fellers have been in the room below for full five minutes. If we are a-goin' to ketch onto their racket, we'd better be about it, I should say."
And as he spoke Jerry Buck, creeping behind the stove, threw himself flat on his stomach upon the uncarpeted floor, close by the mouth of a small round hole, through which in some former time, when the house had been occupied by the old Quaker families once resident in this part of New York, a stove-pipe had passed, conveying heat to this upper chamber from the room beneath.