t occurred presently after the
above dispute, his own nurse, Sarah, could not have been more tender,
watchful, and affectionate than his stepmother showed herself to be.
She nursed him through his illness; allowed his food and medicine to be
administered by no other hand; sat up with the boy through a night
of his fever, and uttered not one single reproach to her husband (who
watched with her) when the twins took the disease (from which we
need not say they happily recovered); and though young Tommy, in his
temporary delirium, mistaking her for Nurse Sarah, addressed her as his
dear Fat Sally--whereas no whipping-post to which she ever would have
tied him could have been leaner than Mrs. Newcome--and, under this
feverish delusion, actually abused her to her face; calling her an old
cat, an old Methodist, and, jumping up in his little bed, forgetful of
his previous fancy, vowing that he would put on his clothes and run away
to Sally. Sally was at her northern home by this time, with a liberal
pension which Mr. Newcome gave her, and which his son and his son's son
after him, through all their difficulties and distresses, always found
means to pay.

What the boy threatened in his delirium he had thought of, no doubt,
more than once in his solitary and unhappy holidays. A year after he
actually ran away, not from school, but from home; and appeared one
morning, gaunt and hungry, at Sarah's cottage two hundred miles away
from Clapham, who housed the poor prodigal, and killed her calf for
him--washed him, with many tears and kisses, and put him to bed and
to sleep; from which slumber he was aroused by the appearance of
his father, whose sure instinct, backed by Mrs. Newcome's own quick
intelligence, had made him at once aware whither the young runaway had
fled. The poor father came horsewhip in hand--he knew of no other law
or means to maintain his authority; many and many a time had his own
father, the old weaver, whose memory he loved and honoured, strapped and
beaten him. Seeing this instrument in the parent's hand, as Mr. Newcome
thrust out the weeping trembling Sarah and closed the door upon her,
Tommy, scared out of a sweet sleep and a delightful dream of cricket,
knew his fate; and, getting up out of bed, received his punishment
without a word. Very likely the father suffered more than the child;
for when the punishment was over, the little man, yet trembling and
quivering with the pain, held out his little bleeding ha