M

CHAPTER VI.

Fishing for a Daughter.

man, reflecting.

R. SPELT sat in his watch-tower, over the head of patiently cobbling Mr. DolHe too was trying to cobblethings in general, in that active head of his beneath its covering of heathery hair. But he did not confine his efforts to things in general: one very particular thing had its share in the motions of his spirit-how to prove that Poppie was indeed his own child. He had missed his little Mattie much, and his child-like spirit was longing greatly after some child-like companionship. This, in Mattie's case, he had found did him good, cleared his inward sight, helped him to cobble things even when her questions showed him the need of fresh patching in many a place where he had not before perceived the rent or the thin-worn threads of the common argument

or belief. And the thought had come to him that perhaps Mattie was taken away from him to teach him that he ought not, as Mattie had said with regard to Mrs. Morgenstern, to cultivate friendship only where he got good from it. The very possibility that he had a child somewhere in London, seemed at length to make it his first duty to rescue some child or other from the abyss around him, and there were not a few swimming in the vast vortex.

Having found out that Mrs. Flanaghan knew more about Poppie than any one else, and that she crept oftener into the bottom of an empty cupboard in her room than anywhere else, he went one morning to see whether he could not learn something from the old Irishwoman. The place looked very different then from the appearance it presented to Lucy the day she found it inhabited by nobody, and furnished with nothing but the gin-bottle.

When the tailor opened the door, he found the room swarming with children. Though it was hot summer weather, a brisk fire burned in

the grate; and the place smelt strongly of reesty bacon. There were three different groups of children in three of the corners : one of them laying out the dead body of a terribly mutilated doll; another, the tangle-haired members of which had certainly had no share in the bacon but the smell of it, sitting listlessly on the floor, leaning their backs against the wall, apparently without hope and without God in the world; one of the third group searching for possible crumbs where she had just had her breakfast, the other two lying ill of the measles on a heap of rags. Mrs. Flanaghan was in the act of pouring a little gin into her tea. The tailor was quick-eyed, and took in the most of this at a glance. But he thought he saw something more, namely, the sharp eyes of Poppie peeping through the crack of the cupboard. He therefore thought of nothing more but a hasty retreat, for Poppie must not know he came after her.

"Good morning to you, Mrs. Flanaghan,” he said, with almost Irish politeness. Then, at a loss for anything more, he ventured to add

"Don't you think, ma'am, you'll have too much on your hands if all them children takes after the two in the corner? They've got the measles, 'aint they, ma'am ?”

nence.

"True for you, sir," returned Mrs. Flanaghan, whom the gin had soothed after the night's absti"But we'll soon get rid o' the varmints," she said, rising from her seat. "Praise God the Father! we'll soon get rid o' them. Get out wid ye!" she went on, stamping with her foot on the broken floor. "Get out! What are ye doin' i' the house when ye ought to be enjoyin' yerselves in the fresh air?-Glory be to God!—there they go, as I tould you. And now what'll I do for yerself this blessed marnin' ?”

By this time the tailor had made up his mind to inquire after a certain Irishman for whom he had made a garment of fustian, but who had never appeared to claim it. He did not expect her to know anything of the man, for he was considerably above Mrs. Flanaghan's level, but it afforded a decent pretext. Mrs. Flanaghan, however, claimed acquaintance with him, and

begged that the garment in question might be delivered into her hands in order to reach him, which the tailor, having respect both to his word and his work, took care not to promise.

But as he went to his workshop, he thought what a gulf he had escaped. For suppose that Mrs. Flanaghan had been communicative, and had proved to his dissatisfaction that the girl was none of his! Why, the whole remaining romance of his life would have been gone. It was far better to think that she was or might be his child, than to know that she was not. And, after all, what did it matter whether she was or was not?—thus the process of thinking went on in the tailor's brain-was she not a child? What matter whether his own or some one's else? God must have made her all the same. And if he were to find his own child at last, neglected and ignorant and vicious, could he not pray better for her if he had helped the one he could help? Might he not then say, "O Lord, they took her from me, and I had no chance with her, but I did what I could-I caught a wild thing,