Page:Tom Beauling (1901).pdf/155



H, Tom!" she said, all in a breath of rapid breathings, "Tibbs has left me, and I am all alone with Jack, and he is sick and nobody will take us in, and now you've come—I'm so glad you've come!—you'll help us, won't you, Tom?"

"Tibbs left you!" said Beauling. "What do you mean?"

"You know Tibbs," said the woman, "so good-natured and easily led he got into trouble—I don't know what; indorsed something and couldn't pay—I think—he wrote he couldn't face me—what could he have been thinking of, as if I cared!—and that I would never see him again, and would never know what had become of him."

"You poor child," said Beauling. She