“Stay, stay!” said Rokesmith, soothing her. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand too well. I know too much about it, sir. I’ve run from it too many a year. No! Never for me, nor for the child, while there’s water enough in England to cover us!”

The terror, the shame, the passion of horror and repugnance, firing the worn face and perfectly maddening it, would have been a quite terrible sight, if embodied in one old fellow-creature alone. Yet it “crops up” — as our slang goes — my lords and gentlemen and honourable boards, in other fellow-creatures, rather frequently!

“It’s been chasing me all my life, but it shall never take me nor mine alive!” cried old Betty. “I’ve done with ye. I’d have fastened door and window and starved out, afore I’d ever have let ye in, if I had known what ye came for!”

But, catching sight of Mrs Boffin’s wholesome face, she relented, and crouching down by the door and bending over her burden to hush it, said humbly: “Maybe my fears has put me wrong. If they have so, tell me, and the good Lord forgive me! I’m quick to take this fright, I know, and my head is summ’at light with wearying and watching.”

“There, there, there!” returned Mrs Boffin. “Come, come! Say no more of it, Betty. It was a mistake, a mistake. Any one of us might have made it in your place, and felt just as you do.”

“The Lord bless ye!” said the old woman, stretching out her hand.

“Now, see, Betty,” pursued the sweet compassionate soul, holding the hand kindly, “what I really did mean, and what I should have begun by saying out, if I had only been a little wiser and handier. We want to move Johnny to a place where there are none but children; a place set up on purpose for sick children; where the good doctors and nurses pass their lives with children, talk to none but children, touch none but children, comfort and cure none but children.”

“Is there really such a place?” asked the old woman, with a gaze of wonder.

“Yes, Betty, on my word, and you shall see it. If my home was a better place for the dear boy, I’d take him to it; but indeed indeed it’s not.”

“You shall take him,” returned Betty, fervently kissing the comforting hand, “where you will, my deary. I am not so hard, but that I believe your face and voice, and I will, as long as I can see and hear.”

This victory gained, Rokesmith made haste to profit by it, for he saw how wofully time had been lost. He despatched Sloppy to bring the carriage to the door; caused the child to be carefully wrapped up; bade old Betty get her bonnet on; collected the toys, enabling the little fellow to comprehend that his treasures were to be transported with him; and had all things prepared so easily that they were ready for the carriage as soon as it appeared, and in a minute afterwards were on their way. Sloppy they left behind, relieving his overcharged breast with a paroxysm of mangling.

At the Children’s Hospital, the gallant steed, the Noah’s ark, the yellow bird, and the officer in the Guards, were made as welcome as their child-owner. But the doctor said aside to Rokesmith, “This should have been days ago. Too late!”

However, they were all carried up into a fresh airy room, and there Johnny came to himself, out of a sleep or a swoon or whatever it was, to find himself lying in a little quiet bed, with a little platform over his breast, on which were already arranged, to give him heart and urge him to cheer up, the Noah’s ark, the noble steed, and the yellow bird; with the officer in the Guards doing duty over the whole, quite as much to the satisfaction of his country as if he had been upon Parade. And at the bed’s head was a colored picture beautiful to see, representing as it were another Johnny seated on the knee of some