"If you please, sir, do you know where I can find a chemist's shop open at this time of night?" I looked round, and discovered a poorly clad little boy, with a basket over his arm, and a morsel of paper in his hand.
"The chemists' shops are all shut," I said. "If you want any medicine, you must ring the night-bell."
"I dursn't do it, sir," replied the small stranger. "I am such a little boy, I'm afraid of their beating me if I ring them up out of their beds, without somebody to speak for me." The little creature looked at me under the street lamp with such a forlorn experience of being beaten for trifling offenses in his face, that it was impossible to resist the impulse to help him.
"Is it a serious case of illness?" I asked.
"I don't know, sir."
"Have you got a doctor's prescription?" He held out his morsel of paper.
"I have got this," he said. I took the paper from him, and looked at it. It was an ordinary prescription for a tonic mixture. I looked first at the doctor's signature; it was the name of a perfectly obscure person in the profession. Below it was written the name of the patient for whom the medicine had been prescribed. I started as I read it. The name was "Mrs. Brand." The idea instantly struck me that this (so far as sound went, at any rate) was the English equivalent of Van Brandt.
"Do you know the lady who sent you for the medicine?" I asked.
" Oh yes, sir! She lodges with mother--and she owes for rent. I have done everything she told me, except getting the physic. I've pawned her ring, and I've bought the bread and butter and eggs, and I've taken care of the change. Mother looks to the change for her rent. It isn't my fault, sir, that I've lost myself. I am but ten years old--and all the chemists' shops are shut up!" Here my little friend's sense of his unmerited misfortunes overpowered him, and he began to cry.
"Don't cry, my man!" I said; "I'll help you. Tell me something more about the lady first. Is she alone?"
"She's got her little girl with her, sir." My heart quickened its beat. The boy's answer reminded me of that other little girl whom my mother had once seen.
"Is the lady's husband with her?" I asked next.
"No, sir--not now. He was with her; but he went away--and he hasn't come back yet." I put a last conclusive question.
"Is her husband an Englishman?" I inquired.
"Mother says he's a foreigner," the boy answered. I turned away to hide my agitation. Even the child might have noticed it! Passing under the name of "Mrs. Brand"--poor, so poor that she was obliged to pawn her ring--left, by a man who was a foreigner, alone with her little girl--was I on the trace of her at that moment? Was this lost child destined to be the innocent means of leading me back to the woman I loved, in her direst need of sympathy and help? The more I thought of it, the more strongly the idea of returning with the boy to the house in which his mother's lodger lived fastened itself on my mind. The clock struck the quarter past eleven. If my anticipations ended in misleading me, I had still three-quarters of an hour to spare before the month reached its end.
"Where do you live?" I asked. The boy mentioned a street, the name of which I then heard for the first time. All he could say, when I asked for further particulars, was that he lived close by the river--in which direction, he was too confused and too frightened to be able to tell me. While we were still trying to understand each other, a cab passed slowly at some little distance. I hailed the man, and mentioned the name of the street to him. He knew it perfectly well. The street was rather more than a mile away from us, in an easterly direction. He undertook to drive me there and to bring me back again to Saint Paul's (if necessary), in less than twenty minutes. I opened the door of the cab, and told my little friend to get in. The boy hesitated.
"Are we going to the chemist's, if you please, sir?" he asked.
"No. You are going home first, with me." The boy began to cry again.
"Mother will beat me, sir, if I go back without the medicine."
"I will take care that your mother doesn't beat you. I am a doctor myself; and I want to see the lady before we get the medicine." The announcement of my profession appeared to inspire the boy with a certain confidence. But he still showed no disposition to accompany me to his mother's house.
"Do you mean to charge the lady anything?" he asked. "The money I've got on the ring isn't much. Mother won't like having it taken out of her rent."
"I won't charge the lady a farthing," I answered. The boy instantly got into the cab. "All right," he said, "as long as mother gets her money." Alas for the poor! The child's education in the sordid anxieties of life was completed already at ten years old! We drove away.