The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 | Page 2

where she had been at work, and saw how slow she walked and the trouble she had in getting up the stair to our room. She gave me my supper and lay down on the bed to rest, for she said she was tired. Next morning she complained of headache and did not rise. Neighbors came in to see her now and then. I stayed by her, she had never been thus before. When it became dark she seemed to forget herself and talked strange. The woman next door gave her a few drops of laudanum in sugar and she fell asleep. When she woke next day she did not know me and was raving. Word was taken to the hospital and a doctor came. He said it was a bad case, and she must be taken to the hospital at once, and he would send the van. It came, the two men with it lifted her from her bed and placed her on a stretcher. A crowd had gathered on the street to see her brought out and placed in the van. I thought I was to go with her, and tried to get on the seat. The helper pushed me away, but the driver bent over and gave me a penny. The horse started and I never saw my mother again. I ran after the van, but it got to the hospital long before I was in sight of it. I went to the door and said I wanted my mother; the porter roughly told me to go away. I waited in front of the building until it got dark, and I wondered behind which of the rows of lighted windows mother lay. When cold to the bone I went back to our room. A neighbor heard me cry and would have me come to her kitchen-fire and she gave me some gruel. Sitting I fell asleep.
I was told I must not go into our room, it was dangerous, so I went to the hospital and waited and watched the people go in and out. One gentleman with a kind face came out and I made bold to speak to him. When I said mother had fever he told me nobody could see her, and that she would be taken good care of. I thought my heart would burst. I could not bear to stay on the Gallowgate, and so weary days passed in my keeping watch on the hospital. On Sunday coming, the neighbor who was so kind to me, said she would go with me, for they allowed visitors to see patients on Sunday afternoon. We started, I trotting cheery in the thought I was about to see my mother. The clerk at the counter asked the name and disease. He said no visitors were admitted to the fever-ward. Could he find out how she was? He spoke into a tin tube and coming back opened a big book. 'She died yesterday,' he said quite unconcerned. I could not help it, I gave a cry and fainted. As we trudged home in the rain, the woman told me they had buried her.
I had now no home. The landlord fumigated our room with sulphur, took the little furniture for the rent, and got another tenant. Everybody was kind but I knew they had not enough for themselves, and the resolve took shape, that I would go to the parish where my mother was born. Often, when we took a walk on the Green, Sunday evenings, she would point to the hills beyond which her father's home once was, and I came to think of that country-place as one where there was plenty to eat and coals to keep warm. How to get there I tried to plan. I must walk, of course, but how was I to live on the road? I was running messages for the grocer with whom mother had dealt, and he gave me a halfpenny when he had an errand. These I gave to the woman where I slept and who was so kind to me despite her poverty. I was on London street after dark when a gentleman came along. He was half-tipsy. Catching hold of my collar he said if I would lead him to his house he would give me sixpence. He gave a number in Montieth row. I took his hand, which steadied him a little, and we got along slowly, and were lucky in not meeting a policeman. When we got to the number he gave me, I rang the bell. A man came to the door, who exclaimed, At it again. The gentleman stumbled in and I was going away when he recollected me. Fumbling in his pocket, he picked out a coin and put it into