“If you please, sir, do you know where I can find a chemist’s shop open at this time of night?”
I looked round, and discovered a poorly clad little boy, with a basket over his arm, and a morsel of paper in his hand.
“The chemists’ shops are all shut,” I said. “If you want any medicine, you must ring the night-bell.”
“I dursn’t do it, sir,” replied the small stranger. “I am such a little boy, I’m afraid of their beating me if I ring them up out of their beds, without somebody to speak for me.”
The little creature looked at me under the street lamp with such a forlorn experience of being beaten for trifling offenses in his face, that it was impossible to resist the impulse to help him.
“Is it a serious case of illness?” I asked.
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Have you got a doctor’s prescription?”
He held out his morsel of paper.
“I have got this,” he said.