“And will you help me to get my little girl? Oh, how good you are!
Everybody is saying what a Father it is that's come to----” She stopped,
then said quite soberly: “I'll get somebody to lend me a shawl to bring
'er 'ome in. People say they pawn everything, and perhaps the beautiful
white perlice I bought for 'er ... Oh, I'll never let 'er out of my
sight again, never!”
“What is your name, my girl?”
“Agatha Jones,” the girl answered.
It was nearly eleven o'clock on Sunday night before they were ready to
start on their errand. Meantime Aggie had done two turns at the foreign
clubs, and John Storm had led a procession through Crown Street and been
hit by a missile thrown by a “Skeleton,” whom he declined to give in
charge. At the corner of the alley he stopped to ask Mrs. Pincher to
wait up for him, and the girl's large eyes caught sight of the patch of
plaster above his temple.
“Are you sure you want to go, sir?” she said.
“There's no time to lose,” he answered. The bloodhound was with him; he
had sent home for it since the attempted riot.
As they walked toward Westminster she told him where she had been, and
what money she had earned. It was ten shillings, and that would buy so
many things for baby.
“To-morrow I'll get a cot for her--one of those wicker ones; iron is so
expensive. She'll want a pair o' socks too, and by-and-bye she'll 'ave
to be shortened.”
John Storm was thinking of Glory. He seemed to be retreading the steps
of her life in London. The dog kept close at his heels.
“She'll 'a bin a month away now, a month to-morrow. I wonder if she's
grow'd much--I wonder! It's wrong of people letting their childring go
away from them. I'll never go out at nights again--not if I 'ave to tyke
in sewin' for the slop shops. See this?” laughing nervously and showing
a shawl that hung on her arm. “It's to bring 'er 'ome in--the nights is
so chill for a byeby.”
John's heart was heavy at sight of these little preparations, but the
young mother's face was radiant.
As they went by the Abbey, under its forest of scaffolding, and, walking
toward Millbank, dipped into the slums, that lie in the shadow of the
dark prison, they passed soldiers from the neighbouring barracks going
arm-in-arm with girls, and this made Aggie talk of her “friend,” and
cry a little, saying it was a week since she had seen him, and she was
afraid he must have 'listed. She knew he was rude to people sometimes,
and she asked pardon for him, but he wasn't such a bad boy, after all,
and he never knocked you about except when he was drinking.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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