A House to Let (14 page)

We could do no less than agree with him, and thank him for his frank and
honest manner of meeting us. It was arranged that I should send over the
writing-materials from my lodgings; and, to my unutterable joy and
relief, it was also readily acknowledged that the poor little orphan boy
could find no fitter refuge than my old arms were longing to offer him,
and no safer protection for the night than my roof could give. Trottle
hastened away up-stairs, as actively as if he had been a young man, to
fetch the child down.

And he brought him down to me without another moment of delay, and I went
on my knees before the poor little Mite, and embraced him, and asked him
if he would go with me to where I lived? He held me away for a moment,
and his wan, shrewd little eyes looked sharp at me. Then he clung close
to me all at once, and said:

"I'm a-going along with you, I am—and so I tell you!"

For inspiring the poor neglected child with this trust in my old self, I
thanked Heaven, then, with all my heart and soul, and I thank it now!

I bundled the poor darling up in my own cloak, and I carried him in my
own arms across the road. Peggy was lost in speechless amazement to
behold me trudging out of breath up-stairs, with a strange pair of poor
little legs under my arm; but, she began to cry over the child the moment
she saw him, like a sensible woman as she always was, and she still cried
her eyes out over him in a comfortable manner, when he at last lay fast
asleep, tucked up by my hands in Trottle's bed.

"And Trottle, bless you, my dear man," said I, kissing his hand, as he
looked on: "the forlorn baby came to this refuge through you, and he will
help you on your way to Heaven."

Trottle answered that I was his dear mistress, and immediately went and
put his head out at an open window on the landing, and looked into the
back street for a quarter of an hour.

That very night, as I sat thinking of the poor child, and of another poor
child who is never to be thought about enough at Christmas-time, the idea
came into my mind which I have lived to execute, and in the realisation
of which I am the happiest of women this day.

"The executor will sell that House, Trottle?" said I.

"Not a doubt of it, ma'am, if he can find a purchaser."

"I'll buy it."

I have often seen Trottle pleased; but, I never saw him so perfectly
enchanted as he was when I confided to him, which I did, then and there,
the purpose that I had in view.

To make short of a long story—and what story would not be long, coming
from the lips of an old woman like me, unless it was made short by main
force!—I bought the House. Mrs. Bayne had her father's blood in her;
she evaded the opportunity of forgiving and generous reparation that was
offered her, and disowned the child; but, I was prepared for that, and
loved him all the more for having no one in the world to look to, but me.

I am getting into a flurry by being over-pleased, and I dare say I am as
incoherent as need be. I bought the House, and I altered it from the
basement to the roof, and I turned it into a Hospital for Sick Children.

Never mind by what degrees my little adopted boy came to the knowledge of
all the sights and sounds in the streets, so familiar to other children
and so strange to him; never mind by what degrees he came to be pretty,
and childish, and winning, and companionable, and to have pictures and
toys about him, and suitable playmates. As I write, I look across the
road to my Hospital, and there is the darling (who has gone over to play)
nodding at me out of one of the once lonely windows, with his dear chubby
face backed up by Trottle's waistcoat as he lifts my pet for "Grandma" to
see.

Many an Eye I see in that House now, but it is never in solitude, never
in neglect. Many an Eye I see in that House now, that is more and more
radiant every day with the light of returning health. As my precious
darling has changed beyond description for the brighter and the better,
so do the not less precious darlings of poor women change in that House
every day in the year. For which I humbly thank that Gracious Being whom
the restorer of the Widow's son and of the Ruler's daughter, instructed
all mankind to call their Father.