In a little back room in a street running off the Lambeth Road, a lad of about sixteen lay on the sofa, wheeled near the window so that he might see out into the street.

By his side, busily plying her needle and thread, sat a young woman whose thin hands and haggard cheeks told their own story of mental torture and bodily suffering.

She was very poor—you could tell that by her well-worn dress and the nature of her occupation. A woman must be poor indeed who sews linen for a livelihood in our great city. She was married, if the wedding-ring on her finger spoke the truth, and she called herself Mrs. Smith. Presently she lifted her face from the work and looked across to the sofa.

‘Well, Shakspeare,’ she said, ‘do you feel wanner now?’

‘Yes, thank you, Mrs. Smith,’ answered the lad; ‘I’m all right now. It makes me warm to see the folks a-movin’ about. Lor, shan’t I be glad when I can go out! Do you think it’ud hurt me if I wropped up?’

‘You mustn’t go out, the doctor says, not when the wind’s in the east.’

‘Ah, I have been bad, ain’t I?—reg’lar bad. Do you know, Mrs. Smith, I believe if you hadn’t nussed me I should o’ been a-turnin’ up my toes to the daisies now. Granny’s a good soul, but she ain’t in the hunt with you at nussin’.

‘Poor old lady,’ said Mrs. Smith, ‘she’s wanted nursing herself; but we’ve got you all right between us, Shakspeare, and when your mother comes back she’ll find her boy nearly himself again.’

‘Poor mother—ain’t she just fond of me!’ exclaimed Master Shakspeare Jarvis, drawing a letter from his pocket. ‘Here’s the last letter as the leadin’ tragedian wrote for her to say as they was on the road home. Why, she might be here any time now, Mrs. Smith. It’s the first tower as they’ve bin without me ever since I can remember, and I hope it’ull be the last.’

‘Never mind,’ said Mrs. Smith, with a smile; ‘you haven’t been idle; there’s the new drama.’

‘Ah!’ exclaimed the lad, his pale face flushing, ‘I think I’ve done it this time. There’s a part for mother as’ull suit her prime, and my part’s tiptop. Shall I give you a scene now?’

‘No, you must not excite yourself.’

‘I know what I shall do,’ answered Master Shakspeare; ‘I shall get mother and father to call a rehearsal here afore we start on the tower, and then you shall see it. I should like you to see it. I’ve called the lady in it Bess, after you.’

Mrs. Smith sighed. It was many a long day since anyone had called her Bess. Young Jarvis had found out that it was her name quite by accident.

Mrs. Smith had come some time since to lodge in this little house in Lambeth. She took the top room and kept it to herself, and the other lodgers, who were as curious as most lodgers are about their neighbours, could find out nothing about her except that she worked for one of the City houses, and was a married woman whose husband was never seen.

But old Mrs. Jarvis, the landlady, finding her a quiet, nice young woman, always ready to sympathise with her rheumatics and other ailments, gradually made a friend and confidant of her, and Bess, when she could spare the time, was invited to come down into the little parlour and listen to her landlady’s trials and tribulations.

Thus it was that she learned the Jarvis’s family history. She learned how Mr. Jarvis, the old lady’s son, had a travelling theatrical show; how he had invested a portion of his savings in house property, partly as a home for his old mother, and partly as a refuge for himself and family when in town, which wasn’t often. By letting off a portion of the house, and leaving the old lady in charge, this arrangement became a profitable one, for the strolling players had ‘a drum’ to come to between their tours where they could live rent free.

Mrs. Smith had lived in the little top room for about six months when the Jarvises came home for a fortnight to reorganize their company and arrange for some novelties; and then Shakspeare, the boy, fell ill—so ill that there was nothing to do but leave him at home with granny.

Granny had her hands full with the lodgers and wanted cosseting herself, so that when Mrs. Smith saw the poor boy, who was like a caged bird, and pined for the roving life, tossing on the bed of sickness, she sat by his side and comforted him, and did little womanly things for him, which helped him to bear his pain more patiently.

At last he grew to look for her, to fret if she did not come and sit by him; he would take his medicine from no one else; and poor-old granny’s stock of patience was soon exhausted by what she called his ‘whims and contrarinesses.’ Then Mrs. Smith would be called in and would act as peacemaker, soothing the irritable boy and the irritated old lady at the same time.

So it came about that at last she was regularly installed as Shakspeare’s nurse, and she would bring her work down into the room where he lay, and sit beside him for hours together. A firm friendship grew up between them. All that was best in the lad’s Bohemian but honest nature blossomed in the sunshine of Bess’s gentle care, and he looked upon her as a sort of angel—an angel who was deserving a much better fate than to be oppressed by some terrible grief, and to have to work for slop-houses in the City for her living.

Shakspeare could write, and was what his mother called a ‘scholard’; and so from time to time, as he grew better, he had written her full, true, and particular accounts of his recovery, and of the lady-lodger’s kindness to him.

Mrs. Jarvis’s heart overflowed with motherly gratitude, for she idolized her boy; but she was not ‘scholard’ enough to let it trickle from her heart down her arm into a pen and or to paper; and so from time to time she got the leading man (who had seen better days, and taught virtue in a national school before he took to delineating villainy on the boards) to write in reply to Shakspeare, and in every letter there was always a mother’s blessing for Mrs. Smith, the kind lodger.

Thus far had events progressed, and thus they stood on the day when this chapter opens, and we see Mrs. Smith at her work, and Shakspeare, who is still weak from his long illness, lying on the sofa.

Mrs. Smith bends over her work and stitches away; and after Shakspeare has read his mother’s letter aloud, and then read it to himself, there is a short silence.

Shakspeare folds the letter and puts it away carefully again.

‘You like reading letters over again and again, don’t you?’ he says presently.

Mrs. Smith starts.

‘Why, what do you mean?’ she says hesitatingly.

‘When I was ill and you thought I was asleep, I often used to see you take letters from your pocket and read them again and again. Were they from your husband, who is abroad?’

The question was put in innocent boyish curiosity, but Mrs. Smith flushed scarlet and turned her head away so that the lad might not notice her confusion.

‘Yes,’ she answered, after a pause; ‘they were from my husband.’

‘When is he coming home?’

‘I—I don’t know. Soon, I hope,’ stammered Mrs. Smith.

‘I hope I shall gee him. I’m sure he must be a good fellow, or you wouldn’t kiss his letters like you do.’

Shakspeare Jarvis little knew the tender chord he had touched. Mrs. Smith bent over her work, and the tears trickled down her face. She was thinking of her absent husband. She had visited him from time to time as the regulations allowed, and the meetings had been painful to them both. She had cheered him and bidden him hope. One visiting-day she had been too ill to go, and had written, telling him; the next she had gone—had gone at a time when the expense of her journey had crippled her—and had been told that she could not see him. Her husband had committed some offence against prison regulations, and his punishment was ‘no visitors, no letters.’ Since then she had not heard from him, and now she was getting anxious and nervous again. Every day that passed and she received no news, she grew more and more distressed. She knew his impetuous nature, she had seen how terribly he had been tried by the prison discipline, and she dreaded to think what he might have done in a fit of rage or despair.

She believed him innocent. He had told her all—all that he knew, and she believed him. He was still her noble, handsome George. It was all a vile plot against him; but what could she, a poor, weak, destitute woman, do to prove it?

After her father’s death, thrown entirely upon her own resources, she had determined to live—to live on and toil and struggle, trusting that some day, when the cruel prison-gates rolled back, George might not be alone in the world, but might have at least one faithful, loving heart to look to for support when he began the terrible struggle which would lie before him.

Shakspeare Jarvis noticed the tears as they fell streaming on the work, and he was wise enough to turn and look out of the window and hum a tune, just as if he hadn’t the slightest idea what Mrs. Smith was doing.

He hadn’t looked out of window a minute before he uttered a little cry of surprise and joy.

A cab had drawn up to the door with four heavy boxes on the roof.

‘Oh, Mrs. Smith,’ cried the lad, half beside himself, ‘here they are!’

‘Who?’

‘Why, mother and father. Hullo! they’ve got a gentleman with them. Perhaps he’s the new tragedian. Lor ‘ain’t he popped into the house quick!’

Mrs. Smith rose and folded her work up.

‘I’m going to my own room, Shakspeare dear,’ she said;

‘I’ll come and see your mother presently.’

Bess ran out before Shakspeare could reply. She didn’t want strangers to come in and see her red eyes.

Hardly had she beat a retreat before Mrs. Jarvis, having duly embraced granny below, came panting up the stairs, making them creak and tremble, and, pushing open the door, she had Shakspeare clasped in her motherly arms, squeezing him so vigorously that his ‘God bless you, mother!’ came out in spasmodic jerks, a syllable at a time.

Then there was father to shake hands with, and then Shakspeare, looking up, saw a young man, with a shaved facc and a curious, frightened look on it, standing at the doorway. He had on a long overcoat that Shakspeare knew was his father’s, and when he, with instinctive politeness, took his hat off, Shakspeare’s quick eye noticed that his hair was closely cropped.

Mrs. Jarvis noticed the look.

‘This is a friend of ours, Shakspeare, my boy, that we met on the road. He’s going to lodge with us for a bit.’

‘How do you do, sir?’ said Shakspeare, holding out his hand.

The man took the proffered hand and shook it gently, as if he were ashamed or afraid of it. Shakspeare couldn’t make him out at all.

‘Where’s the guardjen hangel?’ asked Mrs. Jarvis, looking round. ‘I must thank her for all she’s done for the boy.’

‘She’s gone upstairs, mother. She would go.’

‘We’ll have her down,’ cried Mrs. Jarvis, in her quick, impetuous way; but before she could move to call up the stairs, there was a gentle knock at the door.

‘I beg your pardon, I left some of my work, ’said Mrs. Smith.

‘I——

‘GEORGE!’

‘BESS!’

In a moment, with a wild cry of mutual recognition, the strange gentleman and Mrs. Smith were locked in each other’s arms, while the Jarvis family looked on in blank astonishment.

‘Which I’m blest!’ exclaimed Mrs. Jarvis, a little later, when the situation was explained to her, ‘if it don’t beat all the scenes in all the dramers as ever was writ! Well I never!’