"Now then, my boy—it's time to go," said the medico.
"Please, sir, do let me stop."
"I can't, my lad—it's time to go home. Where do you live?"
"Don't live nowhere, sir!"
"Nowhere! Where's your father and mother?"
"Ain't got none, sir!"
"For the first time in my life," said Dr. Barnardo as he was telling this incident, "I was brought face to face with the misery of outcast childhood. I questioned the lad. He had been sleeping in the streets for two or three years—he knew every corner of refuge in London. Well, I took him to my lodgings. I had a bit of a struggle with the landlady to allow him to come in, but at last I succeeded, and we had some coffee together.
"His reply to one question I asked him impressed me more than anything else.
"'Are there many more like you?' I asked.
"'Heaps, sir.'