"That 'ere's true, wot yer a tellin' me?" "Yes, it is quite true." "I'd sooner be there nor in quod" (prison). "Is it now we's to come, missus?" "I will take you to the refuge at once. I will go with you myself by train." "Me and the little un together?" "You shall sometimes see your child, but the home for little children is not in the same place." At these words Helen, who had been moving towards the door, stopped short, and the look of satisfaction faded out of her face. Very tight was the pressure of the little sleepy arms round her neck, and very strong the love for the boy in her heart; her love was stronger than her fear. She turned sharp on her visitor, all her gentleness gone, and the old fierce Helen uppermost again. "Didn't yer say as my love for the boy wor the o'ny good thing as I 'ad? well, we ain't agoin' to separate 'omes, and we ain't a goin' to be parted. Yer uncommon ceevil, mum, to think o' it, but me and the little un don't find it conwenient. There, good even to yer: yer welcome to the room but not to the company." Bearing Robin in her arms, she rushed downstairs; nor could Mrs. Aytoun, though she tried, overtake her. This good woman, a true sister to the poor, had lost Helen and Robin through a mistake. She had forgotten a fact which yet a moment before she herself had pointed out--she had forgotten that the one Divine ray in the midst of all this moral darkness was Helen's love for the boy. Through this love she might be saved, but never against it. She was willing to go through all the dreary routine, for such it seemed to her, of civilised life with the boy, but never without him, never far away from him, feeling all the time that he was learning to love others and forgetting her. But as she clasped him to her bosom under an archway where for the present she knew they both were safe, she felt that she had thrown away both her own chance and his; yet just now, with his little face close to hers, she was scarcely sorry. Though a thief herself, she might still keep him from stealing--this dream she had not yet abandoned. As she sat so, her hands covering her face, the child pulled her vigorously by the sleeve. "Look, mammy!" he said, pointing to an old woman who was selling cherries in halfpenny bags at the opposite corner; "Robin wants cerries," he pouted. "Well, dearie," said Helen, "mammy's sorry, but she ain't got a 'ap'ny for her little boy; all those bags costs a 'ap'ny, Robin." She thought Robin would have cried, but to her surprise he did not; he looked round at her, smiled, then ran quickly across the road, hid cleverly behind the old woman: when for a brief instant her back was turned, secured a bag of cherries, and brought them back to Helen. Helen saw it all--saw it all, too astonished to speak. When he returned, and threw the stolen fruit in triumph into her lap, she stood up and asked him quietly, and with no show of anger, who taught him to do that: