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WHAT WILL BECOME OF THEM?

A STORY IN TWO PARTS.

PART I

"Please, Ma'am, I want to come in out of the rain," said the dripping
figure at the door.

"And who are you, Sir?" demanded the lady, astonished; for the bell had
been rung familiarly, and, thinking her son had come home, she had
hastened to let him in, but had met instead (at the front-door of her
fine house!) this wretch.

"I'm Fessenden's fool, please, Ma'am," replied the son--not of this
happy mother, thank Heaven! not of this proud, elegant lady, oh,
no!--but of some no less human-hearted mother, I suppose, who had
likewise loved her boy, perhaps all the more fondly for his
infirmity,--who had hugged him to her bosom so many, many times, with
wild and sorrowful love,--and who, be sure, would not have kept him
standing there, ragged and shivering, in the rain.

"Fessenden's fool!" cries the lady. "What's your name?"

"Please, Ma'am, that's my name." Meekly spoken, with an earnest, staring
face. "Do you want me?"

"No; we don't want a boy with such a name as that!"

And the lady scowls, and shakes her head, and half closes the forbidding
door,--not thinking of that other mother's heart,--never dreaming that
such a gaunt and pallid wight ever had a mother at all. For the idea
that those long, lean hands, reaching far out of the short and split
coat-sleeves, had been a baby's pure, soft hands once, and had pressed
the white maternal breasts, and had played with the kisses of the fond
maternal lips,--it was scarcely conceivable; and a delicate-minded
matron, like Mrs. Gingerford, may well be excused for not entertaining
any such distressing fancy.

"Wal! I'll go!" And the youth turned away.

She could not shut the door. There was something in the unresentful, sad
face, pale cheeks, and large eyes, that fascinated her; something about
the tattered clothes, thin, wet locks of flaxen hair, and ravelled straw
hat-brim, fantastic and pitiful. And as he walked wearily away, and she
saw the night closing in black and dark, and felt the cold dash of the
rain blown against her own cheek, she concluded to take pity on him. For
she was by no means a hard-hearted woman; and though her house was
altogether too good for poor folks, and she really didn't know what she
should do with him, it seemed too bad to send him away shelterless, that
stormy November night. Besides, her husband was a rising
politician,--the public-spirited Judge Gingerford