"They must think somethin' of ye as sends ye a present like this," said Jenny, and then, after a moment, in a fluttering voice, "Is it a laidy, sir?"
"It's my mother," said Oscar.
"Your mother!" said Jenny, in a tone of relief. "Well, that's what I do call a mother--being good to anybody like this."
"She has been good to me all my life, Jenny, and all my life I've treated her badly."
Jenny looked at him strangely as if something surprised and pained her.
"You have, sir?"
"Shamefully, Jenny, yet she has forgiven me again and again."
Jenny was silent for a moment and then she said, "Mothers is like that, isn't they? Now there's Jim Cobb, the shandry man, 'e knocks 'is mother about somethin' cruel, but she never 'aves 'im up for it, never! Mothers is proper good!"
"Is your mother good to you, Jenny?"
"Me? I'm an orfling," said Jenny, and then, lowering her voice to a tone of confidence, she added, "I don't mind tellin' you, but I am! I always tells the other lodgers as my mother was one o' them girls as ye see at the Aquarium at nights covered with silks and diamonds."