The Belovéd Vagabond

Why he singled me out for adoption from among the unwashed urchins of London I never could conjecture. Once I asked him. "Because," said he, "you were ugly, dirty, ricketty, under-sized, underfed and wholly uninteresting. Also because your mOther was the very worst washer-woman that ever breathed gin into a shirt-front." I did not resent these charges, direct and implied, against my mOther. She did launder villainously, and she did drink gin, and of the nine uncared-for gutter-snipes she brought into the world, I think I was the most unkempt and neglected. I know that Sunday-school books tell you to love your mOther; but if the only maternal caresses you could remember were administered by means of a wet pair of woollen drawers or the edge of a hot flat-iron, you would find filial piety a virtue somewhat abstract. Verily do earwigs care more for their progeny than did my mOther. She sold me body and soul to Paragot for half-a-crown. It fell out thus