e to my shop to buy them."

"I thought you would like to keep them yourself, mother."

"Keep them? Oh, they are keepsakes, are they? Look you, Jack, if they
are to be kept you had better take them away at once, and give them to
the young girls. Girls like keepsakes, old women like money."

"Well, mother, sell them if you please; they are your own."

"Sell them? let me see--yes, I think I know where there is a sort of
curiosity-shop, in Church Street; but it's a long way to walk, Jack, and
that--let me see," continued she, counting the different articles, "one,
two, three--seven times, Jack."

"But why not take them all at once?"

"All at once, you stupid boy! I should get no more for two than for one.
No, no; one at a time, and I may make a few shillings. Well, Jack, it's
very kind of you, after all, so don't mind my being a little cross. It
was not on account of the things, but because you did not come to see
me, and I've been looking out for you."

"If I had thought that, I would have come sooner, mother, although it
would not have been convenient."

"I believe you, Jack, I believe you; but you young people can't feel as
an old woman like I do. There is but one thing I love in the world,
Jack, now, and that's you; and when I get weary of waiting for that one
thing, and it don't come, Jack, it does make a poor old woman like me a
little cross for the time."

I was touched with this last speech of old Nanny's, who had never shown
me any such a decided mark of kindness before. "Mother," said I, "depend
upon it, whenever I return to Greenwich, you shall be the first person
that I come to see after I have been to my mother's."

"That's kind, Jack, and you keep your promise always. Now sit down; you
don't want to go away already, do you?"

"No, mother, I came to spend the whole morning with you."

"Well, then, sit down--take care, Jack, you'll knock down that bottle.
Now tell me, what do you intend to do with your hundred pounds?"

"I have settled that already, mother. I have given it away."

"Already! Why, the boy has one hundred pounds given him on the morning,
and he gives it away before night, Mercy on us! who would ever think of
leaving you any money?"

"No one, mother; and I never expect any except what I earn."

"Why, Jack, do you know how much one hundred pounds is?"

"I think so."

"Now, Jack, tell me the truth, who did you give it to, your father, or
your little sister, or who? for I can't und