af out of his basket, and pushed it through a hole
into the lining of his cap, for safety.

When he went back with Mrs. Crump in the evening, and she asked him for
his earnings, that little sixpence in his cap felt like a stone, seeming
to weigh him down to the ground; and when he went to the corner where he
slept, he lay down on his little ragged bed, cold and miserable; and
though he was tired out, he could not sleep for thinking of his great
wickedness in concealing the sixpence.

Then he looked round the room, and thought how much whiter and sweeter
his old home was; he remembered, too, how his kind aunt used to kiss him
if he cried, and he held up his little pale wet face, almost hoping he
should feel that kiss once more; he longed so intensely for a little
love, poor little "heir!"

Mrs. Crump's room was, like herself, dirty and ugly: perhaps it may be
silly to say so, but I do think that rooms generally resemble their
inmates.

The ceiling of this one was brown and peeled, the walls were covered
with old newspapers, with here and there a scrap of brown
wrapping-paper, making unsightly and hideous patterns; the whole was
splashed with dirt and mildew; the floor was rotten at places, and
black, and quite slippery with grease and dirt; the window had four
panes, two of which were stuffed with rags.

As little Fe's tired eyes wandered round this dirty room, they fell upon
the figure of Mrs. Crump sleeping in a bed in the opposite corner of the
room. She was breathing heavily, and after Fe had listened for some time
to her short snores, he felt so miserable and lonely and wicked, that he
formed the brave resolution of arousing her, and confessing to her the
history of the sixpence.

It was strange that what Fe would have trembled to confess in the broad
daylight he felt strong and brave enough to acknowledge by the light of
the pale moon. He crawled up, after a few minutes' thought, and after
diving about his ragged bed, he found his cap, and took from the leaf
his precious sixpence; then he crept to the side of Mrs. Crump's bed,
shivering, but determined. But suddenly he halted, and gave a scream of
fright; a band of moonlight fell across the bed, and certainly there lay
Mrs. Crump, but her nightcap had slipped off, and her black wig lay on a
chair by her bedside. Poor Fe, in his childish ignorance, had never had
a doubt about the wig; in fact, he had never understood that people wore
such things. When he saw