At last, however, she made a great effort, and roused herself. The unknown boy after whom she yearned could not be identified among all these strange faces; and there was something which could be done for good Dick, the boy who had always been good to her. She did for Dick what no one could have expected her to do; she went and looked for a lodging where they could establish themselves. After a while she found two small rooms in a house facing the river,--one in which Dick could sleep, the other a room with a fireplace, where his hot meals, which he no doubt would insist upon, could be cooked, and where, in a corner, she herself could sleep when the day was over. She had a little stock of reserve money on her person, a few shillings saved, and something more, which was the remnant of a sum she had carried about with her for years, and which I believe she intended “to bury her,” according to the curious pride which is common among the poor. But as for the moment there was no question of burying her, she felt justified in breaking in upon this little hoard to please her boy by such forlorn attempts at comfort as were in her power. She ventured to buy a few necessaries, and to make provision as well as she knew how for the night--the first night which she would have passed for years under a roof which she could call her own. One of the chief reasons that reconciled her to this step was, that the room faced the river, and that not Dick alone, but the other whom she did not know, could be watched from the window. Should she get to know him, perhaps to speak to him, that other?--to watch him every summer evening in his boat, floating up and down--to distinguish his voice in the crowd, and his step? But for this hope she could not, I think, have made so great a sacrifice for Dick alone--a sacrifice she had not been able to make when the doing of it would have been still more important than now. Perhaps it was because she was growing older, and the individual had faded somewhat from her consciousness; but the change bewildered even herself. She did it notwithstanding, and of her free will. CHAPTER XVIII.