The small boy paused abruptly at this point, and looked earnestly in Katie’s kind and pitiful face.
“Where does your brother live?” asked Katie.
The small boy looked rather perplexed, and said that he couldn’t rightly remember the name of the street, but that the owner of the lugger “know’d it.” Whereat Katie seemed disappointed, and said she would have been so glad to have visited him, and given him such little comforts as his disease might warrant.
“Oh, ma’am,” exclaimed the small boy, looking wistfully at her with his large blue eyes, “wot a pity I’ve forgot it! The doctor ordered ’im wine too—it was as much as ’is life was worth not to ’ave wine,—but of course they couldn’t afford to git ’im wine—even cheap wine would do well enough, at two bob or one bob the bottle. If you was to give me two bob—shillins I mean, ma’am—I’d git it for ’im to-night.”
Katie and her cousin conversed aside in low tones for a minute or two as to the propriety of complying with this proposal, and came to the conclusion that the boy was such a nice outspoken honest-like fellow, that it would do no harm to risk that sum in the circumstances. Two shillings were therefore put into the boy’s dirty little hand, and he was earnestly cautioned to take care of it, which he earnestly, and no doubt honestly, promised to do.
“What is your name, boy?” asked Katie, as she was about to leave him.
“Billy—Billy Towler, ma’am,” answered the urchin, pulling his forelock by way of respectful acknowledgment, “but my friends they calls me Walleye, chiefly in consikence o’ my bein’ wery much the rewerse of blind, ma’am, and niver capable of bein’ cotched in a state o’ slumber at no time.”
This reply had the effect of slightly damaging the small boy’s character for simplicity in Katie’s mind, although it caused both herself and her companion to laugh.
“Well, Billy,” she said, opening her card-case, “here is my card—give it to your sick brother, and when he sends it to me with his address written on the back of it I’ll call on him.”
“Thankee, ma’am,” said the small boy.