“There!” says the child, knitting his little downy eyebrows into a frown.  “Drat the dirt!  I’ve cleaned up.  Where’s my beer?”

Benjamin’s mother chuckled till Trottle thought she would have choked herself.

“Lord ha’ mercy on us!” says she, “just hear the imp.  You would never think he was only five years old, would you, sir?  Please to tell good Mr. Forley you saw him going on as nicely as ever, playing at being me scouring the parlour floor, and calling for my beer afterwards.  That’s his regular game, morning, noon, and night—­he’s never tired of it.  Only look how snug we’ve been and dressed him.  That’s my shawl a keepin his precious little body warm, and Benjamin’s nightcap a keepin his precious little head warm, and Benjamin’s stockings, drawed over his trowsers, a keepin his precious little legs warm.  He’s snug and happy if ever a imp was yet.  ’Where’s my beer!’—­say it again, little dear, say it again!”

If Trottle had seen the boy, with a light and a fire in the room, clothed like other children, and playing naturally with a top, or a box of soldiers, or a bouncing big India-rubber ball, he might have been as cheerful under the circumstances as Benjamin’s mother herself.  But seeing the child reduced (as he could not help suspecting) for want of proper toys and proper child’s company, to take up with the mocking of an old woman at her scouring-work, for something to stand in the place of a game, Trottle, though not a family man, nevertheless felt the sight before him to be, in its way, one of the saddest and the most pitiable that he had ever witnessed.

“Why, my man,” says he, “you’re the boldest little chap in all England.  You don’t seem a bit afraid of being up here all by yourself in the dark.”

“The big winder,” says the child, pointing up to it, “sees in the dark; and I see with the big winder.”  He stops a bit, and gets up on his legs, and looks hard at Benjamin’s mother.  “I’m a good ’un,” says he, “ain’t I?  I save candle.”

Trottle wondered what else the forlorn little creature had been brought up to do without, besides candle-light; and risked putting a question as to whether he ever got a run in the open air to cheer him up a bit.  O, yes, he had a run now and then, out of doors (to say nothing of his runs about the house), the lively little cricket—­a run according to good Mr. Forley’s instructions, which were followed out carefully, as good Mr. Forley’s friend would be glad to hear, to the very letter.

As Trottle could only have made one reply to this, namely, that good Mr. Forley’s instructions were, in his opinion, the instructions of an infernal scamp; and as he felt that such an answer would naturally prove the death-blow to all further discoveries on his part, he gulped down his feelings before they got too many for him, and held his tongue, and looked round towards the window again to see what the forlorn little boy was going to amuse himself with next.