I ever saw. The clothes on his little limbs were evidently meant for
somebody almost double his size, but they were clean and tidy.

In one hand he held a bundle, tied in a red handkerchief, and in the
other a bunch of wild-flowers that bore signs of having travelled far
in the heat of the sun, their blossoms hanging down, dusty and
fading, and their petals dropping one by one on the ground.

"Who are you, my child?" I said, "and what do you want?"

At my question the boy placed his flowers on my table, and, pulling
off his cap, made a queer movement with his feet, as though he were
trying to step backwards with both at once, and said, in a voice so
deep that it quite startled me, so strangely did it seem to belong to
the size of the clothes, and not the wearer,--

"Please'm, it's J. Cole; and I've come to live with yer. I've brought
all my clothes, and every think."

For the moment I felt a little bewildered, so impossible did it seem
that the small specimen of humanity before me was actually intending
to enter anybody's service; he looked so childish and wistful, and
yet with a certain honesty of purpose shining out of those big, wide-
open eyes, that interested me in him, and made me want to know more
of him.

"You are very small to go into service," I said, "and I am afraid you
could not do the work I should require; besides, you should have
waited to hear from me, and then have come to see me, if I wanted you
to do so."