For he was different from the rest, and hated
the rough horse-play and bad language with all his might.
"I must have a sup to make me forget it," she muttered again. "He
looked for all the world like his father. I told Fowley at the time it
would come home to us, and it will."
Noisily the children came in, clamoured for supper, and took it in
their dirty hands, and then went to bed.
Their father was helped home at closing time, too far gone to remember
what had happened, but no Dick came in.
Bareheaded he had run away through the fog, his thin jacket and broken
boots a poor protection from the biting cold, but in his excitement he
scarcely felt it.
In a hiding place in the lining of his old jacket he had the little
pocket Bible that had been his mother's gift, with his name, Richard
Hart Crosby, on the fly leaf.
Folded small within it were the torn remains of a once handsome crimson
and blue silk handkerchief, the only memento of his father he
possessed. Somehow it had escaped the utter destruction that visited
all good things in Mrs. Fowley's keeping, and Dick treasured it more
than words could tell.
Feeling with his hand to be sure his treasures were safe, he ran
breathlessly on to Paddy's lodgings, in a back street not far from the
tin works.
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