I looked up, not a little surprised at the sight of a ragged, barefoot child.
Before I had time to say anything, Harvey went on:
"He lives round in Blake's Court and hasn't any mother. I found him on a doorstep feeding birds."
My eyes rested on the child's face while my boy said this. It was a very sad little face, thin and colorless, not bold and vicious, but timid and having a look of patient suffering. Harvey held him firmly by the hand with the air of one who bravely protects the weak.
"No, ma'am; he hasn't any mother. Have you, Jim?"
"She's been dead ever so long; hasn't she, Jim?"
"Yes, ever since last winter," he said as he fixed his eyes, into which I saw the tears coming, upon my face. My heart moved toward him, repulsive as he was because of his rags and dirt.
"One of God's little lambs straying on the cold and barren hills of life," said a voice in my heart. And then I felt a tender compassion for the strange, unlovely child.
"Old Mrs. Flint; but she doesn't want me."
"Oh, because I'm nothing to her, she says, and she doesn't want the trouble of me." He tried to say this in a brave, don't-care sort of way, but his voice faltered and he dropped his eyes to the floor. How pitiful he looked!
"Poor child!" I could not help saying aloud.
Light flashed over his pale face. It was something new to him, this interest and compassion.
"One of God's little lambs." I heard the voice in my heart saying this again. Nobody to love him--nobody to care for him. Poor little boy! The hand of my own child, my son who is so very dear to me, had led him in through our door and claimed for him the love and care so long a stranger to his heart. Could I send him out and shut the door upon him, when I knew that he had no mother and no home? If I heeded not the cry of this little one precious in God's sight, might I not be thought unworthy to be the guardian of another lamb of his fold whom I loved as my own life?
"I've got heaps of clothes, mother--a great many more than I want. And my bed is wide. There's room enough in the house, and we've plenty to eat," said Harvey, pleading for the child. I could not withstand all these appeals. Rising, I told the little stranger to follow me. When we came back to the sitting-room half an hour afterward, Jim Peters would hardly have been known by his old acquaintances, if any of them had been there. A bath and clean clothes had made a wonderful change in him.