Mr Twitter stopped and looked helplessly at the figure on the bed.
“Perhaps,” said the superintendent, with much delicacy of feeling, “you would prefer to be alone with your boy when he awakes. If I can be of any further use to you, you know where to find me. Good-day, sir.”
Without waiting for a reply the considerate superintendent left the room.
“Oh! Sammy, Sammy, speak to me, my dear boy—speak to your old father!” he cried, turning again to the bed and kneeling beside it; but the drunken sleeper did not move.
Rising hastily he went to the door and called the landlady.
“I’ll go home, missis,” he said, “and send the poor lad’s mother to him.”
“Very well, sir, I’ll look well after ’im till she comes.”
Twitter was gone in a moment, and the old landlady returned to her lodger’s room. There, to her surprise, she found Sammy up and hastily pulling on his boots.
In truth he had been only shamming sleep, and, although still very drunk, was quite capable of looking after himself. He had indeed been asleep when his father’s entrance awoke him, but a feeling of intense shame had induced him to remain quite still, and then, having commenced with this unspoken lie, he felt constrained to carry it out. But the thought of facing his mother he could not bear, for the boy had a sensitive spirit and was keenly alive to the terrible fall he had made. At the same time he was too cowardly to face the consequences. Dressing himself as well as he could, he rushed from the house in spite of the earnest entreaties of the old landlady, so that when the distracted mother came to embrace and forgive her erring child she found that he had fled.
Plunging into the crowded thoroughfares of the great city, and walking swiftly along without aim or desire, eaten up with shame, and rendered desperate by remorse, the now reckless youth sought refuge in a low grog-shop, and called for a glass of beer.