"Listen, boy!" he said. "You shall take me where you please, so
that you take me where the people are very miserable or very
wicked. I want to do them good, and not to harm them. You shall
have money, as I have told you, and I will bring you back. Get up!
Come quickly!" He made a hasty step towards the door, afraid of
her returning.
"Will you let me walk by myself, and never hold me, nor yet touch
me?" said the boy, slowly withdrawing the hand with which he
threatened, and beginning to get up.
"I will!"
"And let me go, before, behind, or anyways I like?"
"I will!"
"Give me some money first, then, and go."
The Chemist laid a few shillings, one by one, in his extended hand.
To count them was beyond the boy's knowledge, but he said "one,"
every time, and avariciously looked at each as it was given, and at
the donor. He had nowhere to put them, out of his hand, but in his
mouth; and he put them there.
Redlaw then wrote with his pencil on a leaf of his pocket-book,
that the boy was with him; and laying it on the table, signed to
him to follow. Keeping his rags together, as usual, the boy
complied, and went out with his bare head and naked feet into the
winter night.
Preferring not to depart by the iron gate by which he had entered,
where they were in danger of meeting her whom he so anxiously
avoided, the Chemist led the way, through some of those passages
among which the boy had lost himself, and by that portion of the
building where he lived, to a small door of which he had the key.
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