chiffoniere attacking with the poker and when disarmed prize-fighting
with her double fists, and down and up and up and down and dreadful! But
I couldn't bear to see the poor young creature roughly handled and her
hair torn when they got the better of her, and I says "Gentlemen
Policemen pray remember that her sex is the sex of your mothers and
sisters and your sweethearts, and God bless them and you!" And there she
was sitting down on the ground handcuffed, taking breath against the
skirting-board and them cool with their coats in strips, and all she says
was "Mrs. Lirriper I'm sorry as ever I touched you, for you're a kind
motherly old thing," and it made me think that I had often wished I had
been a mother indeed and how would my heart have felt if I had been the
mother of that girl! Well you know it turned out at the Police-office
that she had done it before, and she had her clothes away and was sent to
prison, and when she was to come out I trotted off to the gate in the
evening with just a morsel of jelly in that little basket of mine to give
her a mite of strength to face the world again, and there I met with a
very decent mother waiting for her son through bad company and a stubborn
one he was with his half-boots not laced. So out came Caroline and I
says "Caroline come along with me and sit down under the wall where it's
retired and eat a little trifle that I have brought with me to do you
good," and she throws her arms round my neck and says sobbing "O why were
you never a mother when there are such mothers as there are!" she says,
and in half a minute more she begins to laugh and says "Did I really tear
your cap to shreds?" and when I told her "You certainly did so Caroline"
she laughed again and said while she patted my face "Then why do you wear
such queer old caps you dear old thing? if you hadn't worn such queer old
caps I don't think I should have done it even then." Fancy the girl!
Nothing could get out of her what she was going to do except O she would
do well enough, and we parted she being very thankful and kissing my
hands, and I nevermore saw or heard of that girl, except that I shall