“Hush, dear boy! You know that would be wrong and could do no good. It is sinful even to feel such a desire.”
“How can I help it, mother!” returned Jack indignantly. Then he asked, “What are we going to do now, mother?”
For some time the poor widow did not reply; then she spoke in a low tone, as if murmuring to herself, “The last sixpence gone; the cupboard empty; nothing—nothing left to pawn—”
She stopped short, and glanced hastily at her marriage ring.
“Mother,” said Jack, “have you not often told me that God will not forsake us? Does it not seem as if He had forsaken us now?”
“It only seems like it, darling,” returned the widow hurriedly. “We don’t understand His ways. ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him!’”
It seemed as if God were about to test the faith of His servant, for at that moment a cab drove furiously round the corner of a street and knocked her down. Jack was overturned at the same time. Recovering himself, instantly, he found his mother in a state of unconsciousness, with blood flowing from a deep cut in her forehead. In a state of semi-bewilderment the poor boy followed the stretcher on which Mrs Matterby was carried to the nearest hospital, where he waited while his mother’s injuries were examined.
“My boy,” said a young surgeon, returning to the waiting room, and patting Jack’s head, “your mother has been rather badly hurt. We must keep her here to look after her. I daresay we shall soon make her well. Meanwhile you had better run home, and tell your father—if, that is—your father is at home, I suppose?”
“No, sir; father’s dead.”
“Well then your sister or aunt—I suppose there’s some relative at home older than yourself?”