Wikkey | Page 3

as he crept shivering around the street corners, and to the frost which clutched the thinly-clad body. The cough, which Wikkey scarcely remembered ever being without, increased to such violence as to shake him from head to foot, and his breathing became hard and painful; yet still he clung to his crossing with the pertinacity of despair, scanning each figure that approached with eager, hungry eyes. He had laid out part of Lawrence's half-crown on a woolen muffler, which at first had seemed a marvel of comfort, but the keen north-easter soon found its way even through that, and the hot pies on which he expended the rest did not warm him for very long; there came a day, too, when he could only hold his pie between his frozen hands, dreamily wondering why he felt no wish to eat it, why the sight of it made him feel so sick. A dreadful day that was. Mechanically, Wikkey from time to time, swept his way slowly over the crossing, but the greater part of the time he spent sitting at the foot of the lamp-post at either end, coughing and shivering, and now and then dozing and starting up in terror lest the "big chap" should have passed by during his brief unconsciousness. Dusk came on, and then lamp-light, and still Wikkey sat there. A policeman passing on his beat saw the haggard face and heard the choking cough. "You'd best be off home, my lad," he said, pausing a moment; "you don't look fit to be out on a night like this;" and Wikkey, taking the remark to be only another form of the oft-heard injunction to "move on," seized his broom and began sweeping as in an evil dream--then sank down exhausted on the other side. It was getting late, later than he usually stayed, but something seemed to warn him that this might be his last chance, and he remained crouching there, almost too far-gone to be conscious of the cold; till on a sudden there came, piercing through the dull mist of returning consciousness, a voice saying:
"Hullo, Wikkey! you are late to-night."
And starting upward with wild startled eyes the boy saw Lawrence Granby. He staggered to his feet and gasped out:
"You've come, have you? I've been a watching and a waiting of you, and I thought as you'd never come again."
Then the cough seized him, shaking him till he could only cling to the lamp-post for support till it was over, and then slip down in a helpless heap on the pavement.
"Wikkey, poor little chap, how bad you are," said Lawrence, looking sadly down on the huddled-up figure; "you oughtn't to be out. You--you haven't been watching for me like this?"
"I've been a watching and a watching," Wikkey answered, in faint hoarse tones, "and I thought you'd taken to another crossing and I'd never see you again."
"Poor little chap! poor little lad!" was all the young man could find to say, while there rose up in his heart an impulse which his common sense tried hard to suppress, but in vain. "Wikkey," he said, at last, "you must come home with me;" and he took one of the claw-like hands in his warmly gloved one, and walked on slowly, out of compassion for the child's feeble limbs: even then, however, they soon gave way, and Wikkey once more slid down crying on the pavement. There was nothing for it but for Lawrence to gather up the child in his strong arms, and stride on, wondering whether after all it were not too late to revive the frozen-out life. For one blissful moment Wikkey felt himself held close and warm, and his head nestled against the woolly ulster, and then all was blank.
To say that Lawrence enjoyed his position would be going too far. Whatever might be Wikkey's mental peculiarities, his exterior differed in no way from that of the ordinary street Arab, and such close contact could not fail to be trying to a young man more than usually sensitive in matters of cleanliness; but Lawrence strode manfully on with his strange burden, choosing out the least frequented streets, and earnestly hoping he might meet none of his acquaintances, till at last he reached his lodgings and admitted himself into a small well-lighted hall, where, after calling "Mrs. Evans," he stood under the lamp awaiting her arrival, not without considerable trepidation, and becoming each moment more painfully conscious how extraordinary his behavior must appear in her eyes.
"Mrs. Evans," he began, as the good lady emerged from her own domain on the ground floor. "Mrs. Evans, I have brought this boy"--then he paused, not knowing how to enter upon the needful explanation under the chilling influence of Mrs. Evans' severe and respectful silence.
"I dare say you are