atcher want?"

"What, my darling? Yes, that's it: want--staring want; but you sha'n't
stay here."

"Get out. I shall."

"No, you sha'n't, you ungrateful boy. I won't be separated from my own
child. Bob dear, have you got any money?"

"Eh?"

"Anybody give you anything?" whined the woman. "There ain't been
nothing pass my lips this blessed day."

"Oho! what a wunner!" cried the boy. "Why, I can smell yer."

"No, no, my dear; that's Mrs Billson as you can smell. I've been
talking to her, and she drink 'orrid. Ain'tcher got a few pence for
your poor lone mother, who's ready to break her heart sometimes because
she's parted from her boy?"

"Will you go away if I give you something?"

"Go away? Oho!" whined the woman, wiping off a maudlin tear with the
end of her shawl.

"Here, I say, don't cry on the front-doorsteps. Come down in the hairy,
where nobody can't see you."

"Driven away by my own boy! Oho, oho!"

"'Tain't my fault. Doctor said you wasn't to come, and if you did he'd
send me away."

"Then come home, Bob, to your poor heartbroken mother."

"Walker!" cried the boy. "Why yer ain't got no home to give a chap."

"No home?"

"Well, I don't call that a home, living up in a hattic along o' old
Mother Billson."

"Oh, you ungrateful boy! Ain't it enough for me to have come down so
that I'm obliged to see my own son in liveries, without him turning
against me."

"Who's a-turning again you? Don't cry, I tell yer," he said, angrily
stamping a foot.

"Then you shall come home."

"Sha'n't. I ain't going to leave the doctor and Miss Rich for nobody,
so there."

"Ugh, you viper!"

"Here, stow that. Who's a viper? See what they've done for me when I
was runned over. Why, if it hadn't been for Miss Rich a-nussing of me
when you was allus tipsy, you wouldn't have had no boy at all, only a
dead 'un berrid out at Finchley along o' the old man."

"Ah, you wicked ungrateful little serpent! They've been setting you
again' your poor suffering mother."

"Stow that, I say. You'll have the doctor hear you if you don't be
quiet."

"I won't be quiet, you wicked, wicked--"

"Look here! If you don't hold your row, I won't give you the bob and
two coppers I've got for you."

"Have you got some money for your poor mother, then?"

"I've got a bob a gent give me, and twopence, my half of what we got for
the bones me and 'Lisbeth sold."

"Ah? I'm a poor suffering woman, and I do say thi