When I awoke the next morning, my mother was kneeling by my bedside, and when she saw my eyes resting on her face, she clasped me in her arms, and so we lay for fully half an hour, without a word being spoken. There was a little milk left for breakfast, and this my mother made into very weak milk-and-water. The bread she cut into four slices. One she ate, two she gave to me, and one she put into the cupboard. She laid the battered halfpenny on the mantelshelf. 'Now, Chris,' she said, as she put on her poor worn bonnet, 'when you are hungry you can eat the slice of bread that's in the cupboard; and if I am not at home before you are hungry again, you can buy some bread with that halfpenny. Kiss me, dear child.' 'But, mother,' I remonstrated, you are too ill to go out. You ought to stay at home to-day.' I dare not, child. I _must_ go out. Why, doesn't my Chris want his supper to-night, and his dinner to-morrow? And don't I want my supper and dinner, too?' 'Are you going to the workshop, mother?' 'I am going that way, child.' But I begged her to promise that she would try and be home early, and she was compelled to promise, to satisfy me. With faltering steps she left the room, and walked slowly downstairs. I felt that there was something wrong, but I did not understand it, and certainly would have been powerless to remedy it. I was soon hungry enough to eat the slice of bread; and then I went out, and strolled restlessly about the streets. It was a cold day, and I was glad to get indoors again, although there was no fire. In the afternoon I was hungry again, and mother had not returned. Should I spend the halfpenny? I took it from the mantelshelf. The gift of a fairy in a cotton-print dress! I turned it this way and that, in the endeavour to find some special charm in it. It was as common a halfpenny as I had ever looked upon. I saw no angel's face in it. But my mother said there was, and that was enough. No; I could not spend it. Then I thought that it was unkind of me to let my mother, ill and weak as she was, go out by herself. I reproached myself; I might have helped her on. She promised to return soon; perhaps she was not strong enough to return. These reproachful thoughts and my hunger grew upon me, and my uneasiness increased, until I became very wretched indeed. As dusk was falling, I made up my mind that a certain duty was before me. I must walk into the City to the shop for which my mother used to work, and seek for her. I had been to the place two or three times to take work home, and I knew my way pretty well. Perhaps I should meet my mother on the road. Off I started on my self-imposed task. My increasing hunger made the distance appear twice as long as it really was, and I could not help lingering and longing for a little while at a fine cook-shop, the perfume which pervaded it being more fragrant to me at the time than all the perfumes of Arabia would have been. When I arrived at the workshop, it was closed.