she said, plaintively, "Me no have mother."

"You won't not get mine," replied Tommy doggedly.

She pretended not to understand what was troubling him, and it passed
through his head that she had to wait there till the doctor came down
for her. He might come at any moment.

A boy does not put his hand into his pocket until every other means of
gaining his end has failed, but to that extremity had Tommy now come.
For months his only splendid possession had been a penny despised by
trade because of a large round hole in it, as if (to quote Shovel) some
previous owner had cut a farthing out of it. To tell the escapades of
this penny (there are no adventurers like coin of the realm) would be
one way of exhibiting Tommy to the curious, but it would be a
hard-hearted way. At present the penny was doubly dear to him, having
been long lost and lately found. In a noble moment he had dropped it
into a charity box hanging forlorn against the wall of a shop, where it
lay very lonely by itself, so that when Tommy was that way he could hear
it respond if he shook the box, as acquaintances give each other the
time of day in passing. Thus at comparatively small outlay did he spread
his benevolence over weeks and feel a glow therefrom, until the glow
went, when he and Shovel recaptured the penny with a thread and a bent
pin.

This treasure he sadly presented to the girl, and she accepted it with
glee, putting it on her finger, as if it were a ring, but instead of
saying that she would go now she asked him, coolly,

"Oo know tories?"