“Why have you no work? You have parents, ant home?”
The boy nodded and hung his head. “My father is living, not my mother. But I—I can’t go home. I——” He looked up fearlessly.
“I cannot tell you why, though it is nothing to be ashamed of. Only I—I can’t go home. If I could get work I would not steal. But if you have no work, what can you do?”
“You shall have work, sure!” she exclaimed earnestly. “Pretty soon; when you say good-by to that cough. By me you shall stay till you eat much and get strong. Then I will find work for you.”
He looked up, startled. “You will keep me—Max Ball,—keep me here in your house, when I have—have tried to rob you?”
“Well, why not? You only need to eat. I also must eat; if not from my own dish, then—from some other man’s.”
“You—you trust me?” He could not seem to understand.
“See here, boy. You cannot steal from me. No man takes from me one little thing only it iss something I ought not to have. You already have tried it once. Did you get away mit the goods?” She laughed as if it was a good joke, while the boy still stared.
“You think that iss funny; it iss this way. You come here to rob me, ant you fail because some one—the Great One—iss seeing you. You have tried hard as you can to do right; but you are full of cold, hunger, lonesomeness; you cannot see life iss good any more. So the goot Gott im himmel sends you to one old woman who iss not afraid, ant she has enough for one boy more. You stay by me?”
The warmth, the steaming food that all at once made him faint, the welcome where he had expected, if not rough treatment, certainly arrest, and especially the kindness that recalled the memory of all a loving mother could be,—these were too much for him; he sobbed like a child.