The boy’s sense of injury gave way, and became, indeed, utterly routed the next morning by a feeling of importance. Mrs. Rastin bustled in and prepared a breakfast that filled the room with a most entrancing scent of frying fish; to show her sympathy she sat down with him to the meal, and ate with excellent appetite, beguiling the time with cheery accounts of sudden deaths and murders and suicides that she, in the past, had had the rare good fortune to encounter. Mrs. Rastin took charge of the keys belonging to the chest of drawers, remarking that so far as regarded any little thing that Bobbie’s poor dear mother might have left, she would see that right was done just the same as though it were her own. Holidays being on at the Board School which Bobbie intermittently attended, Mrs. Rastin said how would it be if he were to take a turn in Hoxton Street for a few hours whilst she turned to and tidied up?
“Jest as you like,” said Bobbie agreeably.
“Don’t you go and get into no mischief, mind,” counselled Mr. Rastin.
“Trust me,” said the boy.
“Keep away from that Shoreditch set, and take good care of yourself. You’re all alone in the world now,” said Mrs. Rastin, pouring the last drop from the teapot into her cup, “and you’ll ’ave to look out. You ’ain’t got no mother to ’elp you.”
“By-the-bye,” said Bobbie, “who’s going to cash up for putting the old woman away?”
“Me and a few neighbours are going to see to it,” remarked the lady with reserve. “Don’t you bother your ’ead about that. Run off and—Just a minute, I’ll sew this black band round the sleeve of your coat.”
“Whaffor?” asked the boy.
“Why, bless my soul!” exclaimed Mrs. Rastin. “As a sign that you’re sorry, of course.’
“That’s the idea, is it?”