r watch,
and I had peace of mind to note how thin and worn she had become, as
if her baby was grown too big for her slight arms, even then I was
light-hearted. Without attempting to follow her, I sauntered homeward
humming a snatch of song with a great deal of fal-de-lal-de-riddle-o in
it, for I can never remember words. I saw her enter another shop, baby
linen shop or some nonsense of that sort, so it was plain for what
she had popped her watch; but what cared I? I continued to sing most
beautifully. I lunged gayly with my stick at a lamp-post and missed
it, whereat a street-urchin grinned, and I winked at him and slipped
twopence down his back.

I presume I would have chosen the easy way had time been given me, but
fate willed that I should meet the husband on his homeward journey, and
his first remark inspired me to a folly.

"How is Timothy?" he asked; and the question opened a way so attractive
that I think no one whose dull life craves for colour could have
resisted it.

"He is no more," I replied impulsively.

The painter was so startled that he gave utterance to a very oath of
pity, and I felt a sinking myself, for in these hasty words my little
boy was gone, indeed; all my bright dreams of Timothy, all my efforts to
shelter him from Mary's scorn, went whistling down the wind.

VII. The Last of Timothy

So accomplished a person as the reader must have seen at once that I
made away with Timothy in order to give his little vests and pinafores
and shoes to David, and, therefore, dear sir or madam, rail not overmuch
at me for causing our painter pain. Know, too, that though his sympathy
ran free I soon discovered many of his inquiries to be prompted by a
mere selfish desire to save his boy from the fate of mine. Such are
parents.

He asked compassionately if there was anything he could do for me, and,
of course, there was something he could do, but were I to propose it I
doubted not he would be on his stilts at once, for already I had reason
to know him for a haughty, sensitive dog, who ever became high at the
first hint of help. So the proposal must come from him. I spoke of the
many little things in the house that were now hurtful to me to look
upon, and he clutched my hand, deeply moved, though it was another house
with its little things he saw. I was ashamed to harass him thus, but he
had not a sufficiency of the little things, and besides my impulsiveness
had plunged me into a deuce of a mess,