“No, sir—not now. He was with her; but he went away—and he hasn’t come back yet.”
I put a last conclusive question.
“Is her husband an Englishman?” I inquired.
“Mother says he’s a foreigner,” the boy answered.
I turned away to hide my agitation. Even the child might have noticed it!
Passing under the name of “Mrs. Brand”—poor, so poor that she was obliged to pawn her ring—left, by a man who was a foreigner, alone with her little girl—was I on the trace of her at that moment? Was this lost child destined to be the innocent means of leading me back to the woman I loved, in her direst need of sympathy and help? The more I thought of it, the more strongly the idea of returning with the boy to the house in which his mother’s lodger lived fastened itself on my mind. The clock struck the quarter past eleven. If my anticipations ended in misleading me, I had still three-quarters of an hour to spare before the month reached its end.
“Where do you live?” I asked.
The boy mentioned a street, the name of which I then heard for the first time. All he could say, when I asked for further particulars, was that he lived close by the river—in which direction, he was too confused and too frightened to be able to tell me.
While we were still trying to understand each other, a cab passed slowly at some little distance. I hailed the man, and mentioned the name of the street to him. He knew it perfectly well. The street was rather more than a mile away from us, in an easterly direction. He undertook to drive me there and to bring me back again to Saint Paul’s (if necessary), in less than twenty minutes. I opened the door of the cab, and told my little friend to get in. The boy hesitated.
“Are we going to the chemist’s, if you please, sir?” he asked.