Then Grimes was silent awhile; and then he looked very sad.

“So my old mother’s gone, and I never there to speak to her!  Ah! a good woman she was, and might have been a happy one, in her little school there in Vendale, if it hadn’t been for me and my bad ways.”

“Did she keep the school at Vendale?” asked Tom.  And then he told Grimes all the story of his going to her house, and how she could not abide the sight of a chimney-sweep, and then how kind she was, and how he turned into a water baby.

“Ah!” said Grimes, “good reason she had to hate the sight of a chimney-sweep.  I ran away from her and took up with the sweeps, and never let her know where I was, nor sent her a penny to help her, and now it’s too late—­too late!” said Mr. Grimes.

And he began crying and blubbering like a great baby, till his pipe dropped out of his mouth, and broke all to bits.

“Oh, dear, if I was but a little chap in Vendale again, to see the clear beck, and the apple orchard, and the yew hedge, how different I would go on!  But it’s too late now.  So you go along, you kind little chap, and don’t stand to look at a man crying, that’s old enough to be your father, and never feared the face of man, nor of worse neither.  But I’m beat now, and beat I must be.  I’ve made my bed, and I must lie on it.  Foul I would be, and foul I am. as an Irishwoman said to me once; and little I heeded it.  It’s all my own fault:  but it’s too late.”  And he cried so bitterly that Tom began crying too.

“Never too late,” said the fairy, in such a strange soft, new voice that Tom looked up at her; and she was so beautiful for the moment, that Tom half fancied she was her sister.

No more was it too late.  For as poor Grimes cried and blubbered on, his own tears did what his mother’s could not do, and Tom’s could not do, and nobody’s on earth could do for him; for they washed the soot off his face and off his clothes; and then they washed the mortar away from between the bricks; and the chimney crumbled down; and Grimes began to get out of it.

Up jumped the truncheon, and was going to hit him on the crown a tremendous thump, and drive him down again like a cork into a bottle.  But the strange lady put it aside.

“Will you obey me if I give you a chance?”

“As you please, ma’am.  You’re stronger than me—­that I know too well, and wiser than me, I know too well also.  And as for being my own master, I’ve fared ill enough with that as yet.  So whatever your ladyship pleases to order me; for I’m beat, and that’s the truth.”

“Be it so then—­you may come out.  But remember, disobey me again, and into a worse place still you go.”

“I beg pardon, ma’am, but I never disobeyed you that I know of.  I never had the honour of setting eyes upon you till I came to these ugly quarters.”

“Never saw me?  Who said to you, ’Those that will, be foul, foul they will be’?”