Down the passage he shot like a arrow, with his head held down, and the tears blinding him, so that he runs into a woman, as happened to be turning the corner suddenly, and nearly knocked her down.
She was miserably dressed, and handsome in a wild, haggard way, and when she caught at the wall, staggering beneath the shock of Nick’s jostle and her own weakness, for she seemed to be in the last stage of decline, or something—an’ the last ray of the smoky London sunset struck full on her face—my heart turned cold inside me, for well I knew it must be Nick’s mother.
Nick knew her too. There was a light in them blue eyes of his, as I’d never seen there before. With that look of joy on his face, and the tears still standin’ on his cheeks, I shall see him to my dying day.
“Oh, mother!” he says. “Oh, mother! You’ve come back!”
At that she stood stock-still, and stared at him. Then she thrust out her hand and caught him by his curls, with a clutch that hurt him—I could see by the quiver of his lips—and dragged his head to her and looked him hard in the eyes.
Then she laughed a deep, hoarse, cracked kind of laugh, and says—but not speaking like a common person at all—
“It is the boy. Why, I thought you were dead long ago, you miserable, little wretch!”
At which my blood boiled, and I upped and spoke.
“If he ain’t dead,” I says, “it’s no fault of yours, as left him to starve, two years ago.
“Which a natural feeling towards her own flesh and blood, is what I should have looked for, in a woman and a mother, whatever her walk in life might be. And a better and a dearer lad than him, you have treated so cruel, never lived,” I says, “as I can testify, as have took a mother’s place to him, for many a day past and gone.”