“I’ll ask all about him, mother,” said the cheery boy; but while he was gone to deposit the boat, some other members of their wandering class joined the woman, and distracted, or did their best to distract, her attention. With them she made a long round by the bridge to the Windsor side--(there was a ferry, but pennies are pennies, and were not to be lightly spent on personal ease)--and then make her way to a lodging she knew in the vagrant quarter--the Rag Fair, of the little royal borough. Whatever might be the thoughts that were passing in her mind, or whatever the anxieties within her hidden heart, she had to give her attention to the practical side of her rough life, and stopped on her way to buy some scraps of meat and some bread for her own and her son’s meal. There was a common fire in the lower room of the lodging-house, at which the tramp-lodgers were allowed to cook their supper. This woman did so in her turn, like the rest; and to Dick the scraps which his mother had cooked, as well as she knew how, made a luxurious meal, taken on a corner of the rough table, with all the sounds and all the smells of Coffin Lane coming in at the open door. There was a Babel of sounds going on within in addition, each group talking according to its pleasure, and the outdoor shouting, jesting, quarrelling, coming in as chorus. Dick had not found out very much about his young patron. He told his mother that he had summut to do with a lord, but was not sure what. “But why can’t we stay here a bit?” said Dick. “There ain’t nothing going on in the country but poor things, where we don’t pick up enough to keep body and soul together; you’ll see I’ll make something handsome on the river, with all the odd jobs there is; and if this here young gentleman is as good as his word----” “Did he look as if he would be as good as his word?” “Lord bless us, how can I tell?” said Dick. “I don’t read faces, nor fortunes neither, like you. He said he liked the looks of me; and so did I,” the lad added, with a laugh. “I hope it’ll do him a deal of good. I like the looks of him too.”