“You are Mr. Belcher’s friend, aren’t you?”

“I know Mr. Belcher.”

“If Mr. Belcher should tell you that he would kill you if you didn’t tell, what would you do?”

“I should call the police,” responded Mrs. Dillingham, with a smile.

Then Harry, in a simple, graphic way, told her all about the hard, wretched life in Sevenoaks, the death of his mother, the insanity of his father, the life in the poor-house, the escape, the recovery of his father’s health, his present home, and the occasion of his own removal to New York.  The narrative was so wonderful, so full of pathos, so tragic, so out of all proportion in its revelation of wretchedness to the little life at her side, that the lady was dumb.  Unconsciously to herself—­almost unconsciously to the boy—­her arms closed around him, and she lifted him into her lap.  There, with his head against her breast, he concluded his story; and there were tears upon his hair, rained from the eyes that bent above him.  They sat for a long minute in silence.  Then the lady, to keep herself from bursting into hysterical tears, kissed Harry again and again, exclaiming: 

“My poor, dear boy!  My dear, dear child!  And Mr. Belcher could have helped it all!  Curse him!”

The lad jumped from her arms as if he had received the thrust of a dagger, and looked at her with great, startled, wondering eyes.  She recognized in an instant the awful indiscretion into which she had been betrayed by her fierce and sudden anger, and threw herself upon her knees before the boy, exclaiming: 

“Harry, you must forgive me.  I was beside myself with anger.  I did not know what I was saying.  Indeed, I did not.  Come to my lap again, and kiss me, or I shall be wretched.”

Harry still maintained his attitude and his silence.  A furious word from an angel would not have surprised or pained him more than this expression of her anger, that had flashed upon him like a fire from hell.

Still the lady knelt, and pleaded for his forgiveness.

“No one loves me, Harry.  If you leave me, and do not forgive me, I shall wish I were dead.  You cannot be so cruel.”

“I didn’t know that ladies ever said such words,” said Harry.

“Ladies who have little boys to love them never do,” responded Mrs. Dillingham.

“If I love you, shall you ever speak so again?” inquired Harry.

“Never, with you and God to help me,” she responded.

She rose to her feet, led the boy to her chair, and once more held him in her embrace.

“You can do me a great deal of good, Harry—­a great deal more good than you know, or can understand.  Men and women make me worse.  There is nobody who can protect me like a child that trusts me.  You can trust me.”

Then they sat a long time in a silence broken only by Harry’s sobs, for the excitement and the reaction had shaken his nerves as if he had suffered a terrible fright.