Here once more he paused, looking hard at me with his frightened eyes. I was going to speak, but he stopped me.
“No; let me finish. I came here, sought work, and found it; and found more than work—I found your friend. When I first met him he was unhappy and friendless. You know why better than I do. I watched him, and saw his gallant struggle against poverty and discouragement and perhaps unkindness. I found in him the first congenial companion I had met since she died. I shared his studies, and—and the rest you know. But now,” said he, as once more I was about to speak, “you will wonder what all this has to do with the questions I asked you just now. You may guess or you may not; I don’t know. This is why. When she died, and I madly deserted all the scenes of my old happiness, my two orphan children were left in the charge of a nurse, a young married woman then, whose name was Shield. Now do you wonder at my questions?”
Chapter Thirty Two.
How I came to have several Important Cares upon me.
I scarcely knew whether I was awake or dreaming as Mr Smith closed his strange story with the inquiry—
“Now do you wonder at my questions?”
Little had I thought when that evening I knocked at his door and entered, that before I left the room I should have found Jack’s father.
It was some time before I could talk coherently or rationally, I was so excited, so wild at the discovery. My impulse was to rush to Jack at once, and tell him what I had found, to run for Mr Hawkesbury, to telegraph to Mrs Shield—to do something.