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 the impression that I had produced
on her: "You bring my lost brat home in a cab! Mr. Stranger, you
are mad."

"I hear that you have a lady named Brand lodging in the house," I
went on. "I dare say I am mistaken in supposing her to be a lady
of the same name whom I know. But I should like to make sure
whether I am right or wrong. Is it too late to disturb your
lodger to-night?"

The woman recovered the use of her tongue.

"My lodger is up and waiting for that little fool, who doesn't
know his way about London yet!" She emphasized those words by
shaking her brawny fist at her son--who instantly returned to his
place of refuge behind the tail of my coat. "Have you got the
money?" inquired the terrible person, shouting at her hidden
offspring over my shoulder. "Or have you lost _that_ as well as
your own stupid little self?"

The boy showed himself again, and put the money into his mother's
knotty hand. She counted it, with eyes which satisfied themselves
fiercely that each coin was of genuine silver--and then became
partially pacified.

"Go along upstairs," she growled, addressing her son; "and don't
keep the lady waiting any longer. They're half starved, she and


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