The Two Destinies

change. Mother looks to the change for her rent. It isn't my fault, sir, that I've lost myself. I am but ten years old— and all the chemists' shops are shut up!'

Here my little friend's sense of his unmerited misfortunes overpowered him, and he began to cry.

'Don't cry, my man!' I said; 'I'll help you. Tell me something more about the lady first. Is she alone?'

'She's got her little girl with her, sir.'

My heart quickened its beat. The boy's answer reminded me of that other little girl whom my mother had once seen.

'Is the lady's husband with her?' I asked next.

'No, sir—not now. He was with her; but he went away—and he hasn't come back yet.'

I put a last conclusive question.

'Is her husband an Englishman?' I inquired.

'Mother says he's a foreigner,' the boy answered.

I turned away to hide my agitation. Even the child might have noticed it!

Passing under the name of 'Mrs. Brand'—poor, so poor that she was obliged to pawn her ring—left, by a man who was a foreigner, alone with her little girl—was I on the trace of her at that moment? Was this lost child destined to be the innocent means of leading me back to the woman I loved, in her direst need of sympathy and help? The more I thought of it, the more strongly the idea of returning with the boy to the house in which his mother's lodger lived fastened itself on my mind. The clock struck the quarter past eleven. If my anticipations ended in misleading me, I had still three-quarters of an hour to spare before the month reached its end.

'Where do you live?' I asked.

The boy mentioned a street, the name of which I then heard for the first time. All he could say, when I asked for further particulars, was that he lived close by the river—in which direction, he was too confused and too frightened to be able to tell me.

While we were still trying to understand each other, a cab passed slowly at some little distance. I hailed the man, and mentioned the name of the street to him. He knew it perfectly well. The street was rather more than a mile away from us, in an easterly direction. He undertook to drive me there and to bring me back again to Saint Paul's (if necessary), in less than twenty minutes. I opened the door of the cab, and told my little friend to get in. The boy hesitated.

'Are we going to the chemist's, if you please, sir?' he asked.

'No. You are going home first, with me.'

The boy began to cry again.

'Mother will beat me, sir, if I go back without the medicine.'

'I will take care that your mother doesn't beat you. I am a doctor myself; and I want to see the lady before we get the medicine.'

The announcement of my profession appeared to inspire the boy with a certain confidence. But he still showed no disposition to accompany me to his mother's house.

'Do you mean to charge the lady anything?' he asked. 'The money I've got on the ring isn't much. Mother won't like having it taken out of her rent.'

'I won't charge the lady a farthing,' I answered.

The boy instantly got into the cab. 'All right,' he said, 'as long as mother gets her money.'

Alas for the poor! The child's education in the sordid anxieties of life was completed already at ten years old!

We drove away.

CHAPTER XXV. I KEEP MY APPOINTMENT.

THE poverty-stricken aspect of the street when we entered it, the dirty and dilapidated condition of the house when we drew up at the door, would have warned most men, in my position, to prepare themselves for a distressing discovery when they were admitted to the interior of the dwelling. The first impression which the place produced on my mind suggested, on the contrary, that the boy's answers to my questions had led me astray. It was simply impossible to associate Mrs. Van Brandt (as I remembered her) with the spectacle of such squalid poverty as I now beheld. I rang the door-bell, feeling persuaded beforehand that my inquiries would lead to no useful result.

As I lifted my hand to the bell, my little companion's dread of a beating revived in full force. He hid himself behind me; and when I asked what he was about, he answered, confidentially: 'Please stand between us, sir, when mother opens the door!'

A tall and truculent woman answered the bell. No introduction was necessary. Holding a cane in her hand, she stood self-proclaimed as my small friend's mother.

'I thought it was that vagabond of a boy of mine,' she explained, as an apology for the exhibition of the cane. 'He has been gone on an errand more than two hours. What did you please to want, sir?'

I interceded for the unfortunate boy before I entered on my own business.

'I must beg you to forgive your son this time,' I said. 'I found him lost in the streets; and I have brought him home.'

The woman's astonishment when she heard what I had done, and discovered her son behind me, literally struck her dumb. The language of the eye, superseding on this occasion the language of the tongue, plainly revealed