"
"Indade and you won't, then, seein' as your dinner's none too hearty,
judging by the leanness of your bones. No, I've no chick nor child of
me own, and shure I can let the cratur alone enough to pay the
milkman's bill for this little mite. You'll have to bring the dinner
every day this week, and you'll see he'll get on fine in that time."
Dick gave his friend a hug of gratitude, and kissed Pat's silky head
before he went away. And he hurried home and washed the dinner things,
and cleared up the untidy kitchen like one in a dream. Sometimes it
seemed to Dick that all his work went for nothing at all, for Mrs.
Fowley always muddled things as soon as she came in.
She might have kept the house well on her husband's wages, but a large
slice went to the "Blue Dragon," and out of the remainder she never had
any left by the middle of the week. And she never did any work that
could possibly be handed over to Dick, and the boy was in very truth
the "slavey" they called him, and he rarely had enough to eat. Now she
told him that he must stay away from school that afternoon and mind the
baby, as she had business down the road at a neighbour's. And slipping
a black bottle under her apron, she went out, and Susy, the youngest
but one, followed her, leaving the baby fretting in the old wooden box
that served as cradle.
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