The family was soon packed off to school, Johnnie "with a flea in his ear" for having cleaned his boots imperfectly the night before. Mother then cleared away the remains of breakfast, and the Foreman Shunter fetched a fair-sized zinc bath out of the washhouse, pushed back the table, and set it down before the fire. He filled it with warm water from the copper, and then gave the sleeper a shake and said, "Now, then, boy." The boy roused himself with a little whimper of protest. He had not been very fast asleep; the police in varying forms of their activity were still hovering round the outskirts of his mind. He began to cry miserably at the sight of the zinc bath, which supplied a forgotten link in an awful chain of memories. Yes, this was the police station after all. He remembered now quite well how they gave him a bath before they ... "What are you crying for?" asked Mother. "I'm not going to hurt you, my boy. Nice warm bath. Bind up your feet. Then you can go to sleep again." Perhaps it wasn't the police station, after all. Certainly that institution as he knew it had no Mother and no warm tea and no fried bacon, and no sofa and no old coat. Mother removed the filthy shirt and the tattered knickerbockers with uncompromising but not indelicate hands. "Them had better be burnt, Job," she said sharply, as she gave them to the Foreman Shunter to throw into the back yard. "Better ha' done this job in the scullery, Mother," said he. "Too cold...." She took the temperature of the bath with an expert's finger.... "I never did see anything like this poor child. There's nothing to him. Look at his ribs. You can count 'em. Ugh!" The eye of Mother had been arrested by a broad red mark across both thighs. "That's been done with a whip," said the Foreman Shunter, grimly. "Just look at those feet ... they are beginning to bleed again. And these pore hands. I'll get some rags and some Friar's Balsam. And his hair! Goodness gracious me! I'll have to go to the chemist's for that, I'm thinking." It was perfectly true that Mother had to pay a visit to the chemist for the boy's hair. Nothing less than the chemist could meet the case. In the meantime, the Foreman Shunter soaped and washed the boy thoroughly, dried him with a coarse towel, rubbed the Friar's Balsam on the mutilated hands and feet, which made them smart horribly, and bound them in clean rags. Mother then returned to perform wonders with the chemist's lotion. Afterwards she fetched a nightgown of Alfie's, put it on the boy, wrapped him up in a couple of blankets, and made him comfortable on the sofa, and the Foreman Shunter drew it a bit nearer the fire. Then the boy was told he could sleep as long as he liked. Presently he began to doze, his mind still running on the police; but certainly this was not a bit like the station. VII "What'll you do with him, Mother?"