CHAPTER II.

GIP'S HOME.

WHETHER Gip was naturally stronger than Tom and little Vic, or whether Sandy had learned by experience how to take better care of her, she outlived the first fatal twelve months, and bid fair to struggle through another year. It is true, she was pinched and stunted, her poor little arms were thin, and her face was sallow, with great black eyes in it, usually very solemn, but ready to twinkle merrily upon Sandy. She had been fed with more gin than milk: Sandy could only recollect twice or three times that she had had a draught of sky-blue milk given to her by a kindly woman, who now and then spared them a bit of bread.

But her teeth were coming, which would be a help to her, if he could find anything for them to eat; and he watched their growth with much delight, often nursing her as she cried and moaned all night long upon his knees, while the mother was unconscious in a drunken sleep. Gipsy was growing cunning, too, and caught quickly at the pretty tricks which the other babies had died too soon to learn.

Now that she held out a promise to live, he began to wonder how she would grow up, and what he should do with her when she was a big girl. Anything would be better than being like their mother! If he could only find some way of getting on himself, that he might help Gip when she was growing up!

Small chance was there for Sandy to get on. His cares and duties were increasing fast; and with them, the urgent need for earning more money in one way or another. Gip wanted more food; and before long, his old jacket, which she wore, would be falling into shreds, to say nothing of his own ragged and tattered condition. He made himself very troublesome about the Mansion House, and other places, by pursuing gentlemen, and beseeching them to buy a box of fusees. More than once he had been handed over to the police, who had given him a not unfriendly cuff on the ears, and bade him be off about his business.

What was his business but to provide for himself and Gip, and by one means or another snatch up enough food to keep them alive? Unfortunately, there was a second branch of business—to buy now and then some old thing in Rag Fair, without which he would not be allowed to wander about the streets, and would be compelled to remain at home and starve. Sandy was sometimes on the very verge of despair; but at the worst, times would mend a little. His mother, in her drunken forgetfulness, would let fall a sixpence, or once even a shilling; and Sandy's quick eyes would see it, and his quick fingers would seize it, like a fortune. Or one of the neighbours would give him a day's work at pushing a barrow, paying him sixpence for it, with some small potatoes or frost-bitten turnips into the bargain, at the end of the long day. Then Gip and he would make quite a feast.

"Where are I to go, Gip?" he asked one day, after the police had been more than usually hard upon him. "Where are I to go, and what are I to do? Go about your bis'ness, eh? Well! suppose I ain't got no bis'ness? And I ain't likely to have no bis'ness anywheres, as I can see. I don't know what you and me was born for. They'll begin to tell you to go about your bis'ness as soon as ever you can run in the streets."

Gip looked shrewdly back at him with her bright black eyes, as if she understood the difficulty, but could not help him out of it. She could talk a little by this time, and could manage to get down to the entrance of the alley, and watch for him coming home, till she saw him, and then toddle to meet him, with such tottering steps—for her thin little legs bent under her weight—that Sandy's heart would throb fast with the fear lest she should fall. Sometimes she did fall; and with a shout that made all who heard it turn to look at him, he would dash forward, and pick her up in his arms before she had time to scream.

Gip could trot, too, beside her mother, holding on by her tattered skirt, as the woman dragged her slipshod feet down to the nearest spirit-vault. She swore at the child sometimes, but more often she took her inside, and poured the last drop or two of her glass of gin down Gip's throat, when her grimaces and antics made all around her laugh loudly, as though the puny creature's excitement was a source of great mirth. Gip was learning the road to the spirit-vault readily, and would make her way there herself, when she was tired of playing in the gutter with the other children, and wanted to find her mother; for she was too heavy now for Sandy to carry her out with him, and she was too young to run by his side as he tried to sell fusees along the streets.

Sandy returned home one evening very low and down-hearted. It had been a rainy day, and nobody had stopped in their hurried tramp about their business to look at his damp fusee boxes. They were completely soaked, though he had done his best to keep them covered under his jacket. But then he was quite wet through himself, and the water was dripping from his thick, uncombed hair, and trickling coldly down his face and neck. Night had set in; yet still the rain fell in torrents, driven along the streets by a strong westerly wind. The light from the lamps glistened in pools of water lodging on the pavement, through which he splashed heedlessly with his bare feet. The pipes that drained the roofs leaked, and poured down in waterfalls upon him, as he hurried along, keeping close to the houses for as much shelter as they could give.

Gip could not be waiting and watching for him such a night as this; and it was very well she could not, for he had brought nothing for her—positively nothing—not even one of the stale buns which he begged for her sometimes. It was harder than anything else, worse than the rain, to think that perhaps she would be forced to go to sleep hungry—crying for food, while he had none to give her.

No; Gip was not at the corner. He looked closely into the doorway, where she often sat, as he passed, and felt his heart sink a little lower, as if he were disappointed not to find her there.

For once the alley was quiet and deserted; not a creature who had a home was out that night. Two or three of the windows twinkled dimly with the light of a candle in the room within, and so helped him to avoid the gutter, where the water was running as noisily as a brook. But the room where his mother lived was all blank and dark—not a gleam of light in it, either of fire or candle.

He lifted the latch, and went in, calling softly in the darkness, "Gip! Little Gip!"

Not a sound answered him; Gip's dear shrill voice was silent. Perhaps she was still with her mother in the spirit-vault. Or, perhaps, she was only keeping quiet in fun; for it was one of her pretty tricks to hide, and be as still as a mouse when he came in, while he pretended to search for her everywhere: in their empty cupboard, and under their mother's bed, and even up the chimney, as if Gip could be there! till she would break out suddenly into a burst of laughter, and run at him from her fancied hiding-place, where he had seen her all the time.

Sandy stole carefully across the dark room to the candle, which stood in the neck of a bottle on the chimney-piece, and tried to strike a light with some of his damp fusees. But they sputtered and glimmered only for an instant, leaving him in the darkness of the quiet and perhaps empty room.

But at length he succeeded in getting a match to burn long enough to light the candle. He could see at a glance everything in the small bare room. There was his mother's old flock bed on the floor; and there was his mother herself lying upon it in a dead sleep, her face swollen and red, and her ragged gown drawn over her; for long since the only blanket and old counterpane had gone to the pawnbroker's shop, and there was no chance of their being redeemed.

But was Gip there? Sandy could see plainly enough there was no little Gip under his mother's gown, or beside her on the bed. She was not there; she was not anywhere in the room. He stood motionless in his bewilderment; his eyes wandering round the bare walls, and his heart beating painfully. If little Gip was not at home, where could she be?

He could not bear his pain and dread long. He ran to his mother's side, and shook her roughly by the shoulder, shouting as loudly as he could in her ear.

But she was almost like one dead. It was hard work to awake her, and still harder to bring her to her senses. She lifted herself up in bed, and struck at him; but Sandy slipped out of her way.

Once again, at a safe distance, where he was quite out of reach, he shouted his question at her.

"Where's Gip?" he cried. "Mother, what have you done with my little Gip?"

"Gip?" repeated his mother, in her thick, drunken voice, "Gip? I lost her; couldn't find her anywheres. She's somewhere."

That was all. Sandy's mother fell back again on the bed, and sank into her deep sleep.

Little Gip was lost.

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