"He is on the mend now, but very weak, and
will I go up and see him?"

It is my destiny to mount that step-ladder. So,
up the step-ladder into a loft with a pallet-bed in
it, and a thinly covered mattress in one corner on
the floor; through a doorway without a door, into
a room about twelve feet square, in which, on
"mother's bed," lies Willie—or Willie's shadow.

He is wide awake, and watching a casual
gleam of sunshine that has found its way through
the rainy clouds, and strayed in at the low lattice
window; but as I go up to his pillow, he turns
on me a pair of wonderful eyes, and says, faintly,
"A little better." His mother explains that he
fancies I asked him how he did. His hearing
is quite gone, and he cannot take in a word. I
suggest that this arises from weakness, and will
pass away as he gets his strength again. "You
think it will, ma' am?" she replies, and looks at
him very wistfully; on which, supposing himself
addressed, Willie says again, " A little better,"
and, a minute after, " Drink, mother."

She says she will go and warm him a drop of
milk, and disappears, leaving us together. Willie
turns his eyes slowly from the sunshine to my
face, and from my face to the sunshine. I look at
him and at the place where he lies, and meditate
on the mysterious inequalities there are in the
world, and on the hard lives of the working poor.

The room is as pure as scrubbing and whitewash
can make it; everything about the bed is
scrupulously clean; the old chest of drawers is
covered on the top with a white cloth; as is also
a rough deal box by the wall, which serves as a
table, and on which stands the bottle of doctor's
stuff, with a glass and spoon disposed ornamentally
in connexion with a copy of the British
Workman, a farthing hymn-book, and a Bible.
On the walls, fastened up with pins, are some
rudely coloured scriptural prints, a few
missionary tract pictures, and, in one corner above
the head of another mattress on the floor, the
Lord's Prayer in large type. In the sunshine of
the window are three plants, fresh and green;
and, though the room is low, it is not oppressively
close, for there is a thorough current of air blowing
up from the open door below.

When his mother returns with the warm milk,
he drinks it eagerly, and the pudding being
extracted from the basket, he eats a portion of that,
with an enjoyment pleasant to watch. Having
finished it, he stretches out his arm and looks up
at his mother.

"He wants you to see how thin his arm is,
ma'am," she explains; and rolling up his nightgown
sleeve, she shows me a weak little white
skeleton limb which will carry no more
breadbaskets for many a month to come.

She then sits down by his pillow, puts her arm
round him, and makes him lean against her while
she gives me the particulars of his illness; how
good he was, how little hope there was for
him at one time, but how the doctor says now
he will come round nicely if she can get him a
little strengthening food. The clergyman, she
says, being away, she did not know whom to
apply to. " I didn't think of you, ma'am, till
George told me you'd been asking about Willie;
I've spent many a sixpence for him, but I can't
get what he likes; he takes eggs best, and he
would eat three or four in a day, for he's getting
hungry now, but he mustn't have them;
I let him have one, but I pay three ha'pence
apiece." On my inquiring what the doctor
recommends, she tells me a little broth or arrowroot—
nothing stronger yet—which I volunteer
to send her. It then occurs to me to ask if the
fever is infectious? To which she says she
believes not if I don't stay there over long; so,
having fulfilled my present business, I think it
will, perhaps, be expedient to go away; I
therefore bid Willie good-by, with the foolish
remark that I am sure he is grown, and that the
fever will make a man of him, which, fortunately,
he does not hear, and then I follow his mother
into the outer loft, and down the step-ladder.

Next day, my old servant, who is interested
in Willie as the only boy whom she never
had to tell to shut the garden-gate after him,
makes a pitcher of excellent broth, and leaves
the meat in it, and when submitting it to
my taste for approval, she assures me that if
Willie's mother has any management about her
she will freshen it every day, and it will keep and
fit him for a week: which intimation she also
conveys to George when he comes for it at his
dinner-time. But when I go down, long before
the week's end, to see the little fellow again, his
mother tells me it lasted him only two days, for
what was left after that, turned sour.

I achieve the step-ladder again. Willie is
still in bed, and still as deaf as a stone, and I
think he looks a shade duller and more pallid
than before; but there is no sunshine through
the window on the whitewashed wall to-day, and
the drizzling rain slips mistily like a curtain over
the glass. Still his mother says fondly, as she
puts the scattered hair off his forehead, "He
mends a little—yes, ma'am, I'm sure he mends a
little;" and she adds, that the doctor says if he
could have some jelly broth made of cow-heel or
calf 's-foot, it would be better and more strengthening
than anything else. When I reply that
I would order the butcher's wife to send her
some feet, she hesitates a moment, and then
says, " I can clean them and prepare them myself,
ma'am, if I get them just as they are; you
will have to pay a shilling for the set, but if you
do not name it, Mrs. Briskett will do them, and
they will cost half-a-crown."

When I return home, I tell my servant the fate
of her broth that was to last a week, on which
she exclaims, " She has got no keeping place, I'll
be bound! but she needn't ha' let it waste! And
did she waste that good mutton too? Why, it
would ha' been a dinner for all of 'em. What
sort of a house is it, missis?" I reply that I
have only seen the place into which the outer
door opens, which is a sort of scullery where the
washing-tub and a few pans appear to live, and