"Clothes? Yes; I'll speak to my wife. We'll clothe him, and pay for his schooling, if he ever needs any. Meanwhile, do you get him to help you in any little way he is able for, and keep him out in the fresh air. Never talk to him of the night he came to you, and I really believe he'll be all right in a while. I'm afraid he will hardly remember anything that will help to identify him, because he's such a little creature. Poor little waif! He was in luck when he chose your door to creep up to." So little Fred's fate was arranged for him, for a time at least. Betty taught him to weed in the garden, and to water her many precious pots and boxes of slips and seedlings. She took him with her, when she carried home flowers or plants to her customers, and though he seldom spoke, and never unless asked a question, she soon found that he knew his way as well as she did, and that he never made a mistake about a message. So as time went on, he was provided with a little handcart, and became her trusty little messenger. Other people employed him too, so that he earned many a penny, and these he brought home faithfully to Betty. He had been a very small child for his age, but now he began to grow, and became a tall, slight boy, with, as Betty used to say, "as pretty a face as any lady." Yet many a long day passed, before any one could find out whether he remembered anything that had happened to him before he became "Betty Giles's Fred," as the neighbours called him now. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER IX. IN THE NEW HOME. LET us pay a flying visit to Kelmersdale to see how it fared with "grandma." Mrs. Rayburn has not hitherto appeared in a very amiable light in these pages, yet she was not an altogether bad woman. She had a heart, though it was so overlaid with selfishness that she herself hardly knew that it existed, and she had a conscience, though she made but little use of it. And now, as she sat alone in her snug room, and ate her comfortable meals, she failed to get the slightest comfort or enjoyment out of any of these things. The faces of the two boys—Frank's gentle smile, Fred's saucy laugh—rose up before her, no matter what she was doing or where she was.