For Name and Fame | Page 8

child nodded its head several times, emphatically.
"Then she's a bad lot," the woman said, indignantly.
The child ate its breakfast contentedly, and was then carried by the
porter's wife to the master, who had already heard the circumstance of
its entry.
"It's of no use asking such a baby whether it has any name," he said; "of
course, it would not know. It had better go into the infants' ward. The
guardians will settle what its name shall be. We will set the police at
work, and try and find out something about its mother. It is a
fine-looking little chap; and she must be either a thoroughly bad one, or
terribly pressed, to desert it like this. Most likely it is a tramp and, in
that case, it's odds we shall never hear further about it.
"Any distinguishing mark on its clothes?"
"None at all, sir. It is poorly dressed, and seems to have been very bad

treated. Its skin is dirty, and its little back is black and blue with bruises;
but it has a blood mark on the neck, which will enable its mother to
swear to it, if it's fifty years hence--but I don't suppose we shall ever
hear of her, again."
That afternoon, 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