The boy, stunned by what he hears, falls to smearing his dirty forehead with his dirty palm, and to staring at the ground, and to shaking from head to foot.
"You hear what she says!" Allan says to Joe. "You hear what she says, and I know it's true. Have you been here ever since?"
"Wishermaydie if I seen Tom-all-Alone's till this blessed morning," replies Jo, hoarsely.
Jo looks all around and finally answers, "I don't know how to do nothink and I can't get nothink to do. I'm very poor and ill and I thought I'd come back here when there warn't nobody about and lay down and hide somewheres as I knows on till arter dark, and then go and beg a trifle of Mr. Snagsby. He wos allus willing fur to give me something, he wos, though Mrs. Snagsby, she wos allus a-chivying me--like everybody everywheres."
"Now, tell me," proceeds Allan, "tell me how it came about that you left that house when the good young lady had been so unfortunate as to pity you and take you home?"
Jo suddenly came out of his resignation, and excitedly declares that he never known about the young lady; that he would sooner have hurt his own self, and that he'd sooner have had his unfortnet head chopped off than ever gone a-nigh her; and that she wos wery good to him she wos.
Allan Woodcourt sees that this is not a sham.
"No, I durstn't," says Jo. "I durstn't or I would."
"But I must know," returns Allan, "all the same. Come, Jo!"
After two or three such adjurations, Jo lifts up his head again, and says in a low voice, "Well, I'll tell you something. I was took away. There!"
Ah! very apprehensive of being overheard, Jo looks about him, and even glances up some ten feet at the top of the boarding, and through the cracks in it, lest the object of his distrust should be looking over, or hidden on the other side.
"I durstn't name him," says Jo. "I durstn't do it, sir."
"But I want, in the young lady's name, to know. You may trust me. No one else shall hear."
"Ah, but I don't know," replies Jo, shaking his head fearfully, "as he don't hear. He's in all manner of places all at wunst."
Allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers some real meaning at the bottom of this bewildering reply. He patiently awaits an explicit answer, and Jo, more baffled by his patience than by anything else, at last desperately whispers a name in his ear.