she had died when
he was, as he said, a little chap. He spoke of her always in a hushed
voice, and in a tone of reverence, as a superior being.

"We was poor, you know," he said to George, "and I know mother was
often short of grub, but she was just kind. I don't never remember her
whacking me; always spoke soft and low like; she was good, she was.
She used to pray, you know, and what I remember most is as the night
afore she was took away to a hospital she says, 'Try and live honest,
Bill; it will be hard, but try, my boy. Don't you take to stealing,
however poor you may be;' and I aint," Bill said earnestly over and
over again. "When I has seed any chap going along with a ticker handy,
which I could have boned and got away among the carts as safe as
ninepence, or when I has seed a woman with her purse a-sticking out of
them outside pockets, and I aint had a penny to bless myself with, and
perhaps nothing to eat all day, I have felt it hard not to make a
grab; but I just thought of what she said, and I aint done it. As I
told yer, I have often nabbed things off the stalls or out of the
baskets or carts. It didn't seem to me as that was stealing, but as
you says it is, I aint going to do so no more. Now look yer here,
George; they tells me as the parsons says as when people die and they
are good they goes up there, yer know."

George nodded, for there was a question in his companion's tone.

"Then, of course," Bill went on, "she is up there. Now it aint likely
as ever I should see her again, 'cause, you know, there aint nothing
good about me; but if she was to come my way, wherever I might be, and
was to say to me, 'Bill, have you been a-stealing?' do yer think she
would feel very bad about them 'ere apples and things?"

"No, Bill, I am sure she would not. You see you didn't quite know that
was stealing, and you kept from stealing the things that you thought
she spoke of, and now that you see it is wrong taking even little
things you are not going to take them any more."

"That I won't, so help me bob!" the boy said; "not if I never gets
another apple between my teeth."

"That's right, Bill. You see you ought to do it, not only to please
your mother, but to please God. That's what my mother has told me over
and over again."

"Has she now?" Bill said with great interest, "and did you use to prig
apples and sichlike sometimes?"

"No," George said, "not that sort of thing; but she was talking of
things in general