"Is it a serious case of illness?" I asked.
"I don't know, sir."
"Have you got a doctor's prescription?"
He held out his morsel of paper.
"I have got this," he said.
I took the paper from him, and looked at it.
It was an ordinary prescription for a tonic mixture. I looked first at the doctor's signature; it was the name of a perfectly obscure person in the profession. Below it was written the name of the patient for whom the medicine had been prescribed. I started as I read it. The name was "Mrs. Brand."
The idea instantly struck me that this (so far as sound went, at any rate) was the English equivalent of Van Brandt.
"Do you know the lady who sent you for the medicine?" I asked.
" Oh yes, sir! She lodges with mother--and she owes for rent. I have done everything she told me, except getting the physic. I've pawned her ring, and I've bought the bread and butter and eggs, and I've taken care of the change. Mother looks to the change for her rent. It isn't my fault, sir, that I've lost myself. I am but ten years old--and all the chemists' shops are shut up!"
Here my little friend's sense of his unmerited misfortunes overpowered him, and he began to cry.
"Don't cry, my man!" I said; "I'll help you. Tell me something more about the lady first. Is she alone?"
"She's got her little girl with her, sir."
My heart quickened its beat. The boy's answer reminded me of that other little girl whom my mother had once seen.
"Is the lady's husband with her?" I asked next.
"No, sir--not now. He was with her; but he went away--and he hasn't come back yet."
I put a last conclusive question.
"Is her husband an Englishman?" I inquired.
"Mother says he's a foreigner," the boy answered.
I turned away to hide my agitation. Even the child might have noticed it!
Passing under the name of "Mrs. Brand"--poor, so poor that she was obliged to pawn her ring--left, by a man who was a foreigner, alone with her little girl--was I on the trace of her at that moment? Was this lost child destined to be the innocent means of leading me back to the woman I loved, in her direst need of sympathy and help? The more I thought of it, the more strongly the idea of returning with the boy to the house in which his mother's lodger lived fastened itself on my mind. The clock struck the quarter past eleven. If my anticipations ended in misleading me, I had still three-quarters of an hour to spare before the month reached its end.