expect her to do so, but she took him by the arm and led him along the water-side to a house which stood in a corner, half facing the river, looking towards the sunset. She took him in at the open door, and up-stairs to the room in which she had already set out a homely and very scanty table for their supper. Dick did not know how to express the delight and thanks in his heart. He turned round and gave his mother a kiss in silent transport--a rare caress, such as meant more than words. The window of this room looked up the river, and straight into the “Brocas clump,” behind which the sunset was preparing all its splendour. In the little room beyond, which was to be Dick’s bedroom--glorious title!--the window looked straight across to the rafts. I do not think that any young squire coming into a fine property was ever more happy than the young tramp finding himself for almost the first time in his life in a place which he could call home. He could not stop smiling, so full of happiness was he, nor seat himself to his poor supper, but went round and round the two rooms, planning where he could put up a shelf or arrange a table. “I’ll make it so handy for you, mother; you’ll not know you’re born!” cried Dick, in the fulness of his delight. And yet two barer little rooms perhaps no human home ever was made in. There was nothing there that was not indispensable--a table, two chairs, and no more; and in Dick’s room a small iron bed. All that his mother possessed for her own use was a mattress, which could be rolled up and put aside during the day. She took her son’s pleasure very quietly, as was her wont, but smiled with a sense of having made him happy, which was pleasant to her, although to make him happy had not been her only motive. When she had put away the things from their supper, she sat down at the open window and looked out on the river. The air was full of sound, so softened by the summer that all rudeness and harshness were taken out of it: in the foreground the ferry-boat was crossing and recrossing, the man standing up with his punt-pole against the glow of the western sky; just under the window lay the green eyot, waving with young willows, and up and down in a continual stream on the sunny side of it went and came the boys in their boats. “Show him to me, Dick, when he comes,” said the woman. Dick did not require to be told whom she meant, neither was he surprised at this intensity of interest in _him_, which made his young patron the only figure worth identification in that crowded scene. Had he not been, as it were, Dick’s guardian angel, who had suddenly appeared for the boy’s succour?--and what more natural than that Dick’s mother should desire before everything else to see one who had been such a friend to her boy?