“I’ve had two letters from poor Susan,” he continued, in a tremulous voice, “and I’ll read them to you.  The child’s such a precious treasure to me, Charlotte—­such a little love, a hundred times better than any gold; and now you’re come to mend up her clothes a bit, and see what she wants for me, there’s nothing else that I desire.  I was writing about her to you when you came in.”

“I thought you’d gone and picked up a lost child out of the streets,” said Charlotte, with a sigh of relief.

“No, no; she’s my own,” he answered.  “You hearken while I read poor Susan’s letters, and then you’ll understand all about it.  I couldn’t give her up for a hundred gold guineas—­not for a deal more than that.”

He knew Susan’s letters off by heart, and did not need his spectacles, nor a good light to read them by.  Charlotte listened with emphatic nods, and many exclamations of astonishment.

“That’s very pretty of Susan,” she remarked, “saying as Aunt Charlotte’ll do her sewing, and see to her manners.  Ay, that I will! for who should know manners better than me, who used to work for the Staniers, and dine at the housekeeper’s table, with the butler and all the head servants? to be sure I’ll take care that she does not grow up ungenteel.  Where is the dear child, brother James?”

“She’s gone out for a walk this fine morning,” he answered.

“Not alone?” cried Charlotte.  “Who’s gone out with her?  A child under five years old could never go out all alone in London:  at least I should think not.  She might get run over and killed a score of times.”

“Oh! there’s a person with her I’ve every confidence in,” replied Oliver.

“What sort of person; man or woman; male or female?” inquired Charlotte.

“A boy,” he answered, in some confusion.

“A boy!” repeated his sister, as if he had said a monster.  “What boy?”

“His name’s Tony,” he replied.

“But where does he come from?  Is he respectable?” she pursued, fixing him with her glittering eyes in a manner which did not tend to restore his composure.

“I don’t know, sister,” he said in a feeble tone.

“Don’t know, brother James!” she exclaimed.  “Don’t you know where he lives?”

“He lives here,” stammered old Oliver; “at least he sleeps here under the counter; but he finds his own food about the streets.”

Charlotte’s consternation was past all powers of speech.  Here was her brother, a respectable man, who had seen better days, and whose sister had been a dressmaker in good families, harbouring in his own house a common boy off the streets, who, no doubt, was a thief and pickpocket, with all sorts of low ways and bad language.  At the same time there was poor Susan’s little girl dwelling under the same roof; the child whose pretty manners she was to attend to, living in constant companionship with a vulgar and vicious boy!  What she might have said upon recovering her speech, neither she nor Oliver ever knew; for at this crisis Tony himself appeared, carrying Dolly and his new broom in his arms, and looking very haggard and tattered himself, his bare feet black with mud, and his bare head in a hopeless condition of confusion, and tangle.