Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

208 RAVENSHOE.
The boy told him why he plodded so wearily, day after day,
over here in the West-end. It was for family reasons, into
which I must not go too closely. Somebody, it appeared, still
came home, now and then, just once in a way, to see her mother,
and to visit the den where she was bred; and there was still left
one who would wait for her week after week; still one pair of
childish feet, bare and dirty, that would patter back beside her;
still one childish voice that would prattle with her on the way to
her hideous home, and call her sister.
"Have you any brothers?"
Five, altogether. Jim was gone for a sojer, it appeared, and
Nipper was sent over the water. Harry was on the cross -
"On the cross? " said Charles.
"Ah I " the boy said, "he goes out cly-faking and such. He's
a prig, and a smart one, too. He's fly, is Harry."
"But, what is cly-faking? " said Charles.
"Why a-prigging of wipes and sneeze-boxes and ridicules and
such."
Charles was not so ignorant of slang as not to understand what
his little friend meant now. He said," But you are not a thief, are you? "
The boy looked up at him frankly and honestly, and said," Lord bless you, no! I should n't make no hand of that. I
ain't brave enough for that!"
He gave the boy twopence, and gave orders that one penny
was to be spent in a ball. And then he sauntered listlessly
away, - every day more listless, and not three weeks gone yet.
His mind returned to this child very often. He found himself
thinking more about the little rogue than he could explain. The
strange babble of the child, prattling so innocently, and, as he
thought, so prettily, about vice and crime and misery,- about
one brother transported, one a thief; and you see he could love
his sister even to the very end of it all. Strange babble, indeed,
from a child's lips.'He thought of it again and again, and then, dressing himself
plainly, he went up to Grosvenor Square, where Mary would be
walking with Lord Charles Herries's children. He wanted to
hear them talk.
He was right in his calculations; the children were there.
All three of them this time; and Mary was there too. They
were close to the rails, and he leant his back on them, and
heard every word.
"Miss Corby," said Gus, "if Lady Ascot is such a good
woman, she will go to heaven when she dies?"
"Yes, indeed, my dear," said Mary.
"And when grandma dies, will she go to heaven, too?" said