CHAPTER XI.

A MIDNIGHT BARGAIN.

"Look 'ere," said a low voice, "be a good boy, and don't cry, and then I'll see if I can't get yer somethin' or other to eat."

"But I'm 'ungry, Cherry," whispered the little one in answer, frightened by former experiences into keeping his woe within bounds, "and it's all cold and dark 'ere. I wish you'd take me to mother."

A sharp pang shot across Cherry's heart, and she answered in a voice that held a sob only just restrained from breaking forth, "I can't, Dickie, you know as I can't. I would in a minute if I could; mother's gone a long way off."

"In a train?" whispered Dickie.

Cherry nodded. What did it matter, so that Dickie was pacified? she thought.

"She promised as she'd take me," he said again, "and she never has. She never went a long way from Dickie 'afore."

"No," whispered Cherry again, "no more she did from Cherry; but she couldn't help herself--mother couldn't. She was took."

Dickie turned round wearily, and his little sister smoothed his hair and cheek, till by-and-by his gentle breathing told her that he was at last asleep.

Then she raised herself a little and looked round stealthily.

The room in which she lay was a good-sized one, and in each of the four corners, heaped together for warmth, the different members of four different families were huddled. Tattered rugs, shawls, and rags covered them from the biting February cold, and a flickering nightlight on a box in the middle of the room was the only gleam that revealed the shadowy misery congregated there.

Though the poor little brother was asleep, and Cherry herself sorely needed repose, she still kept her wearied eyes open, watching the door fearfully. At last, overcome by fatigue, she forgot everything, till a slight moan from Dickie brought her back to the present, and she heard a voice close at her elbow say thickly--

"Well, yer can 'ave him: the worst on't is the gal; she'll take on if I say yes, awful."

The words were spoken in a rough sort of undertone by a man who seemed by the sound of his voice to have been drinking heavily.

The answer, from a woman who was already settling herself to sleep in her corner near, came in a hard distinct whisper--

"Never mind _her_! She'll fret a bit, but that'll be the end on it. She can't do nothing. Anybody 'ud know as 'tis better for 'im to be fed and clothed than left 'ere to starve."

The man addressed was sensible of a sort of flash of memory, and a picture came up before his eyes.

A neat, quiet home; an invalid wife sitting in a chair by the fire, tenderly holding a little frail boy; a crippled girl standing with her hand in the child's; a low hoarse voice pleading, "You'll take care of 'em, Tom! You'll let that dreadful drink alone, and feed them as are so helpless instead!"

That was the picture, and as Tom heard the woman say what she proposed "was better than starving," he knew in his heart how cruelly he had broken the promise he had made to his dying wife.

"I'll take 'im right away up to the attic if ye like," the woman went on, "and then," indicating Cherry by a movement of her hand, "she won't hear nor see nothink."

The man shook his head.

"One thing, she do keep 'im quiet when we don't want 'im. And if she makes a fuss I'll find a way to shut 'er mouth; that I will, don't yer fear."

Cherry lay and quaked. Well she knew all that was implied in this low-toned conversation, both towards her little brother and herself. But she too had seen, as by a flash, another scene. A woman on a dying bed, whispering with an earnestness which impressed every word on her child's memory, "Cherry, if you're in any trouble, tell Jesus--ask Him to help you. Oh, Cherry, if I did not know you love Him, my heart would break. Jesus, will help you. Tell Dickie that I always said that."

Cherry thought of it now, at first with a hopeless feeling that things had been so bad for so long that she feared Jesus did not hear; and then with a rebound she determined never to give up what her beloved and dying mother had bequeathed to her. "She always spoke true," she thought, with a sudden lightening of her terrible burden, and her head nestled against Dickie's with a certain dim belief that rescue of some sort would come some day.

The crowded inhabitants of the room had one by one sunk into slumber; even her father had ceased tossing about and swearing at all around him. Still Cherry lay broad awake, thinking over all the events of the last year, and remembering now with a sort of awe how she _had_ called upon her Lord Jesus last May, when things had been so dreadfully bad with little Dickie, and how He had heard her, and had sent Dickie a long and dangerous illness, which had made him quite unable to be taken out on hire with old Sairy as heretofore.

She remembered now with thankfulness, though she had not looked upon it as the answer at the time, that somehow the kind carpenter who had been repairing their wretched room had taken notice of Dickie, and had given him a blanket and some grapes, and how his wife had brought him many a nice meal from their table.

Cherry's life was so hard that she had taken all that happened, both bad and good, with a sort of apathy; but to-night it all came over her afresh, and she realized that this had perhaps been the way her Lord Jesus had answered her despairing prayer for little Dickie.

Then she would pray again; and this time instead of asking only for him to be taken away from the cruel woman everybody called "old Sairy," she would pray that he might have a nice home, and love and care.

Cherry did not say those words, but in her simple language she asked what she wanted, and after that, with a strange sense of the burden lifted on to shoulders which were very strong, she closed her eyes and at last fell asleep.

And even the next day, when Dickie woke, and old Sairy handed him a piece of bread, Cherry took the matter with equanimity, saying to herself over and over again, "I've told Jesus, and He's goin' to see to it."

But when Dickie had eaten the bread ravenously, he turned his little face back again to Cherry's shoulder, and said with a shudder, "Don't yer let me go 'long o' them, Cherry, don't yer!" Then Cherry's heart misgave her, and she looked at her still sleeping father, and then at old Sairy, as if to measure her possibility of resistance.

But Sairy gave her a glance which withered her up, like the raw February air which was rushing in at the open door, and hissed out in an undertone which made her shiver, "If yer don't mind what yer about, it 'ull be the worse for _'im_, and that I tell yer."

An hour after, when she saw them set off as of old, the man with Dickie, and old Sairy with somebody's wailing baby, her heart died within her.

The room had almost cleared. Only a weakly young mother with her babe were left, and two sleeping drunken men.

As Cherry lifted her heavy sorrowful eyes they met those of the woman.

"Come 'ere, dear," she said gently; "don't you take on about the little 'un. It won't 'urt 'im to be out o' doors, and if you 'aven't food to give 'im, ain't it a deal better as they should feed 'im? I 'eard what them two said last night, and it's true as he's pretty nigh starvin'."

"Yes, but you don't know," whispered Cherry, looking round fearfully; "if it was only taking him out I shouldn't care; but--"

At this moment her father roused up and shook himself.

"Eh, gal, so they're gone?" with a coarse laugh; "and to-night we'll get a bit of supper, and some'ut to drink."