"Mother got him." "Oh, well, then, you needn't
fret about him; she'll take care of him." "No, she won't; he won't be
having nothing to eat, I know he won't." And the boy covered his face
again in a sullen despair that was pitiful to see. Now, you know, Hal,
this boy was not begging; he did not come to us with a pathetic appeal
about his starving little brother: he was lying starving himself, and
stupefied, with his head covered over, buried in his rags when I spoke
to him; and this touching reminiscence of his poor little step-brother
came out in the course of Mr. Frost's interrogatory accidentally, and
made my very heart ache. The boy had been in the workhouse for two
years, with his mother, before she married this second husband; and,
saying that he had been sent to school, and kindly treated, and well fed
in the workhouse, I asked him if he would go back thither, and he said
yes. So, rather to Mr. Frost's amazement I think, I got a cab, and put
the child in, and with my kind old gentleman--who, in spite of evident
repugnance to such close quarters with the poor tatterdemalion, would by
no means leave me alone in the adventure--we carried the small forsaken
soul to the workhouse, where we got him, with much difficulty,
_temporarily_ received. The wife of the master of the poor-house knew
the boy again, and corroborated much of what he had told us, adding that
he was a good boy enough while he was there with his mother; but--would
you believe it, Hal?--she also told us that this poor little creature
had come to their gate the night before, begging admittance; but that,
because he had not a _certain written order_ from a certain officer, the
rules of the establishment prevented their receiving him, and he had
been turned away _of course_. I was in a succession of convulsions of
rage and crying all this time, and so adjured and besought poor old Mr.
Frost to take instant measures for helping the little outcast, that when
we left him by the workhouse fire, the woman having gone to get him some
food, and I returned blaspheming and blubbering to my inn, he--Mr.
Frost--went off in search of a principal police-officer of Hull, from
whom he hoped to obtain some further information about the child, which
he presently brought back to me. "Oh yes, the magistrate knew the child;
he had _sent him to prison_ already several times, for being found lying
at night on the wharves and about the streets." So this poor little
wretch was _se