" she said in her
soft girlish way. Then catching our hands in hers, she turned with a
merry laugh, and ran with us up the terraced walk.

"Is your mamma as beautiful as mine?" asked Sally, when we came to a
breathless stop.

"She's as beautiful as--as a wax doll," I replied stoutly.

"That's right," laughed the lady, stooping to kiss me. "You're a dear
boy. Tell your mother I said so."

She went slowly up the steps as she spoke, and when I looked back a
moment later, I saw her smiling down on me between two great columns,
with the snowball bush floating in the warm wind beneath her and the
swallows flying low in the sunshine over her head.

I had opened the side gate, when I felt a soft, furry touch on my hand,
and Sally thrust the forgotten kitten into my arms.

"Be good to her," she said pleadingly. "Her name's Florabella."

Resisting a dastardly impulse to forswear my bargain, I tucked the
mewing kitten under my coat, where it clawed me unobserved by any
jeering boy in the street. Passing Mrs. Cudlip's house on my way home, I
noticed at once that the window stood invitingly open, and yielding with
a quaking heart to temptation, I leaned inside the vacant room, and
dropped Florabella in the centre of the old lady's easy chair. Then,
fearful of capture, I darted along the pavement and flung myself
breathlessly across our doorstep.

A group of neighbours was gathered in the centre of our little
sitting-room, and among them I recognised the flushed, perspiring face
of Mrs. Cudlip herself. As I entered, the women fell slightly apart, and
I saw that they regarded me with startled, compassionate glances. A
queer, strong smell of drugs was in the air, and near the kitchen door
my father was standing with a frightened and sheepish look on his face,
as if he had been thrust suddenly into a prominence from which he shrank
back abashed.

"Where's ma?" I asked, and my voice sounded loud and unnatural in my own
ears.

One of the women--a large, motherly person, whom I remembered without
recognising, crossed the room with a heavy step and took me into her
arms. At this day I can feel the deep yielding expanse of her bosom,
when pushing her from me, I looked round and repeated my question in a
louder tone.

"Where's ma?"

"She was took of a sudden, dear," replied the woman, still straining me
to her. "It came over her while she was standin' at the stove, an' befo'
anybody could reach her, she dropped right down an'