After that I was left to myself, in agony and suspense, to wait the moment of my dissolution.
A long time passed before my master stirred, and when he did the housekeeper’s tea was cold. She bustled about to make him some more, and was so kind in buttering his toast and hunting for some jam, that the drooping spirits of the tired-out boy revived wonderfully. Indeed, as the meal proceeded he became on friendly and confidential terms even with so awful a personage as Mrs Packer.
“Would you like to see my knife, ma’am?” he asked.
“Bless me, what a knife it is,” cried the lady. “You’ll go doing yourself some harm with it.”
“That’s what the other old lady in the train said,” replied Charlie, unconscious of wounding the feelings of his hostess, who fondly imagined she was not more than middle-aged; “but then, you know, she thought it was a fine knife, and I think so too, don’t you? I say, marm, do you know Tom Drift?”
The change of subject was so sudden that Mrs Packer stared at the boy, half wondering whether he was not talking in his sleep.
“What about him?” she inquired.
“Oh, only the old lady was his mother, and I promised her—at least she said—do you know Tom Drift, ma’am?”
“To be sure; he’s one of the boys here.”
“Yes—I say, ma’am, might I see Tom Drift, do you think? I’ve got something to say to him.”