For Name and Fame | Page 8

however, the news came that the body of a tramp had been found, frozen to death in a ditch near the town. She had apparently lost her way and, when she had fallen in, was so numbed and cold that she was unable to rise, and so had been drowned in the shallow water. When the master heard of it, he sent for the porter's wife.
"Mrs. Dickson," he said, "you had better take that child down, and let it see the tramp they have found, frozen to death. The child is too young to be shocked at death, and will suppose she is asleep. But you will be able to see if he recognizes her."
There was no doubt as to the recognition. The child started in terror, when he saw the woman lying in the shed into which she had been carried. It checked its first impulse to cry out, but struggled to get further off.
"Moder asleep," he said, in a whisper. "If she wake, she beat Billy."
That was enough. The woman carried him back to the house.
"She's his mother, sir, sure enough," she said to the master, "though how she should be puzzles me. She is dressed in pretty decent clothes; but she is as dark as a gypsy, with black hair. This child is fair, with a skin as white as milk, now he is washed."
"I daresay he takes after his father," the master--who was a practical man--said. "I hear that there is no name on her things, no paper or other article which would identify her in her pockets; but there is two pounds, twelve shillings in her purse, so she was not absolutely in want. It will pay the parish for her funeral."
An hour later the guardians assembled and, upon hearing the circumstances of the newcomer's admission, and the death of the tramp, they decided that the child should be entered in the books as "William Gale,"--the name being chosen with a reference to the weather during which he came into the house--and against his name a note was written, to the effect that his mother--a tramp, name unknown--had, after leaving him at the door of the workhouse, been found frozen to death next day.
William Gale grew, and throve. He was a quiet and contented child; accustomed to be shut up all day alone, while his mother was out washing, the companionship of other children in the workhouse was a pleasant novelty and, if the food was not such as a dainty child would fancy, it was at least as good as he had been accustomed to.
The porter's wife continued to be the fast friend of the child whom she had saved from death. The fact that she had done so gave her an interest in it. Her own children were out in service, or at work in the fields; and the child was a pleasure to her. Scarce a day passed, then, that she would not go across the yard up to the infants' ward, and bring Billy down to the lodge; where he would play contentedly by the hour, or sit watching her, and sucking at a cake, while she washed or prepared her husband's dinner.
Billy was seldom heard to cry. Perhaps he had wept all his stock of tears away, before he entered the house. He had seldom fits of bad temper, and was a really lovable child. Mrs. Dickson never wavered in the opinion she had first formed--that the dead tramp was not Billy's mother--but as no one else agreed with her, she kept her thoughts to herself.
The years passed on, and William Gale was now no longer in the infants' ward, but took his place in the boys' school. Here he at once showed an intelligence beyond that of the other boys of his own age. The hours which he had, each day, spent in the porter's lodge had not been wasted. The affection of the good woman had brightened his life, and he had none of the dull, downcast look so common among children in workhouses. She had encouraged him to talk and play, had taught him the alphabet, and supplied him with an occasional picture book, with easy words. Indeed, she devoted far more time to him than many mothers, in her class of life, can give to their children.
The guardians, as they went in and out to board meeting, would delight her by remarking:
"That is really a fine little fellow, Mrs. Dickson. He really does you credit. A fine, sturdy, independent little chap."
The child, of course, wore the regular uniform of workhouse children; but Mrs. Dickson--who was handy with her needle--used to cut and alter the clothes to fit him, and thus entirely changed their appearance.
"He looks like a gentleman's child," one of the guardians said, one day.
"I