Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished | Page 8

She felt comparatively easy, however, knowing, as she did, that her child was in the keeping of "Twitter, Slime and ---." That was quite enough to enable her to trace Mr Twitter out. Comforting herself as well as she could with this reflection, she sat down in a dark corner on a cold door-step, and, covering her face with both hands, wept as though her heart would break.
Gradually her sobs subsided, and, rising, she hurried away, shivering with cold, for her thin cotton dress was a poor protection against the night chills, and her ragged shawl was--gone with the baby.
In a few minutes she reached a part of the Whitechapel district where some of the deepest poverty and wretchedness in London is to be found. Turning into a labyrinth of small streets and alleys, she paused in the neighbourhood of the court in which was her home--if such it could be called.
"Is it worth while going back to him?" she muttered. "He nearly killed baby, and it wouldn't take much to make him kill me. And oh! he was so different--once!"
While she stood irresolute, the man of whom she spoke chanced to turn the corner, and ran against her, somewhat roughly.
"Hallo! is that you?" he demanded, in tones that told too clearly where he had been spending the night.
"Yes, Ned, it's me. I was just thinking about going home."
"Home, indeed--'stime to b'goin' home. Where'v you bin? The babby 'll 'v bin squallin' pretty stiff by this time."
"No fear of baby now," returned the wife almost defiantly; "it's gone."
"Gone!" almost shouted the husband. "You haven't murdered it, have you?"
"No, but I've put it in safe keeping, where you can't get at it, and, now I know that, I don't care what you do to me."
"Ha! we'll see about that. Come along."
He seized the woman by the arm and hurried her towards their dwelling.
It was little better than a cellar, the door being reached by a descent of five or six much-worn steps. To the surprise of the couple the door, which was usually shut at that hour, stood partly open, and a bright light shone within.
"Wastin' coal and candle," growled the man with an angry oath, as he approached.
"Hetty didn't use to be so extravagant," remarked the woman, in some surprise.
As she spoke the door was flung wide open, and an overgrown but very handsome girl peered out.
"Oh! father, I thought it was your voice," she said. "Mother, is that you? Come in, quick. Here's Bobby brought home in a cab with a broken leg."
On hearing this the man's voice softened, and, entering the room, he went up to a heap of straw in one corner whereon our little friend Bobby Frog--the street-Arab--lay.
"Hallo! Bobby, wot's wrong with 'ee? You ain't used to come to grief," said the father, laying his hand on the boy's shoulder, and giving him a rough shake.
Things oftentimes "are not what they seem." The shake was the man's mode of expressing sympathy, for he was fond of his son, regarding him, with some reason, as a most hopeful pupil in the ways of wickedness.
"It's o' no use, father," said the boy, drawing his breath quickly and knitting his brows, "you can't stir me up with a long pole now. I'm past that."
"What! have 'ee bin runned over?"
"No--on'y run down, or knocked down."
"Who did it? On'y give me his name an' address, an' as sure as my name's Ned I'll--"
He finished the sentence with a sufficiently expressive scowl and clenching of a huge fist, which had many a time done great execution in the prize ring.
"It wasn't a he, father, it was a she."
"Well, no matter, if I on'y had my fingers on her windpipe I'd squeeze it summat."
"If you did I'd bang your nose! She didn't go for to do it a-purpose, you old grampus," retorted Bobby, intending the remark to be taken as a gentle yet affectionate reproof. "A doctor's bin an' set my leg," continued the boy, "an' made it as stiff as a poker wi' what 'e calls splints. He says I won't be able to go about for ever so many weeks."
"An' who's to feed you, I wonder, doorin' them weeks? An' who sent for the doctor? Was it him as supplied the fire an' candle to-night?"
"No, father, it was me," answered Hetty, who was engaged in stirring something in a small saucepan, the loose handle of which was attached to its battered body by only one rivet; the other rivet had given way on an occasion when Ned Frog sent it flying through the doorway after his retreating wife. "You see I was paid my wages to-night, so I could afford it, as well as to buy some coal and a candle, for the doctor said Bobby must be kept warm."
"Afford it!"