“Now stou thet, sir,” said the man, wagging his head. “I respects the Reverend Jawn Storm a good deal, but I respects Mrs. Lidjer Jupe a good deal more, and when it comes to improper and illegal bizniss——”
“Down't mind 'im, 'Enery,” said the wife, now weeping audibly.
“And down't you tyke on so, Lidjer,” said the husband, and they looked as if they were about to embrace.
John Storm could stand no more. Going down the court he was thinking with a pang of Glory—that she had lived months in the atmosphere of that impostor—when somebody touched his arm in the darkness. It was the girl. She was still crying.
“I reckerlec' seeing you in Crook Lane, sir, the day we christened my byeby, and I waited, thinking p'raps you could help me.”
“Come this way,” said John, and walking by his side along the blank wall of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the girl told her story. She lived in one room of the clergy-house at the back of his church. Having to earn her living, she had answered an advertisement in a Sunday paper, and Mrs. Jupe had taken her baby to nurse. It was true she had given up all claim to the child, but she could not help going to see it—the little one's ways were so engaging. Then she found that Mrs. Jupe had let it out to somebody else. Only for her “friend” she might never have heard of it again. He had found it by accident at a house in Westminster. It was a fearful place, where men went for gambling. The man who kept it had just been released from eighteen months' imprisonment, and the wife had taken to nursing while the husband was in prison. She was a frightful woman, and he was a shocking man, and “they knocked the children about cruel.” The neighbours heard screams and slaps and moans, and they were always crying “Shame!” She had wanted to take her own baby away, but the woman would not give it up because there were three weeks' board owing, and she could not pay.
“Could you take me to this house, my child?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then come round to the church after service to-morrow night.”
The girl's tearful face glistened like April sunshine.