Charley looked at me a little frightened. I felt half frightened at myself when the boy glared on me so.

But he turned and followed, when I beckoned to him; and finding that he acknowledged that influence in me, I led the way straight home. It was not far; only at the summit of the hill. We passed but one man. I doubted if we should have got home without assistance; the boy’s steps were so uncertain and tremulous. He made no complaint, however, and was strangely unconcerned about himself, if I may say so strange a thing.

Leaving him in the hall for a moment, shrunk into the corner of the window-seat, and staring with an indifference that could scarcely be called wonder, at the comfort and brightness about him, I went into the drawing-room to speak to my guardian. There I found Mr Skimpole, who had come down by the coach, as he frequently did without notice, and never bringing any clothes with him, but always borrowing everything he wanted.

They came out with me directly, to look at the boy. The servants had gathered in the hall, too; and he shivered in the window-seat with Charley standing by him, like some wounded animal that had been found in a ditch.

“This is a sorrowful case,” said my guardian, after asking him a question or two, and touching him, and examining his eyes. “What do you say, Harold?”

“You had better turn him out,” said Mr Skimpole.

“What do you mean?” inquired my guardian, almost sternly.

“My dear Jarndyce,” said Mr Skimpole, “you know what I am: I am a child. Be cross to me, if I deserve it. But I have a constitutional objection to this sort of thing. I always had, when I was a medical man. He’s not safe, you know. There’s a very bad sort of fever about him.”

Mr Skimpole had retreated from the hall to the drawing-room again, and said this in his airy way, seated on the music-stool as we stood by.

“You’ll say it’s childish,” observed Mr Skimpole, looking gaily at us. “Well, I dare say it may be; but I am a child, and I never pretend to be anything else. If you put him out in the road, you only put him where he was before. He will be no worse off than he was, you know. Even make him better off, if you like. Give him sixpence, or five shillings, or five pound ten — you are arithmeticians, and I am not — and get rid of him!”

“And what is he to do then?” asked my guardian.

“Upon my life,” said Mr Skimpole, shrugging his shoulders with his engaging smile, “I have not the least idea what he is to do then. But I have no doubt he’ll do it.”

“Now, is it not a horrible reflection,” said my guardian, to whom I had hastily explained the unavailing efforts of the two women, “is it not a horrible reflection,” walking up and down and rumpling his hair, “that if this wretched creature were a convicted prisoner, his hospital would be wide open to him, and he would be as well taken care of as any sick boy in the kingdom?”

“My dear Jarndyce,” returned Mr Skimpole, “you’ll pardon the simplicity of the question, coming as it does from a creature who is perfectly simple in worldly matters — but, why isn’t he a prisoner then?”

My guardian stopped and looked at him with a whimsical mixture of amusement and indignation in his face.

“Our young friend is not to be suspected of any delicacy, I should imagine,” said Mr Skimpole, unabashed and candid. “It seems to me that it would be wiser, as well as in a certain kind of way more respectable,