Читать книгу The Manchester Man онлайн

12 страница из 137

There was a good deal of lounging about Long Millgate and the doors of the “Queen Anne” and “Skinners’ Arms,” of heavily-shod men, in rough garniture of thick hide—armoury against the tan and water in which their daily bread was steeped.

But in all those two days no anxious father, no white-faced mother, had run from street to street, and house to house, to seek and claim a rescued living child. No, not even when the week had passed, though the story of his “miraculous preservation” was the theme of conversation at the tea-tables of gentility and in the bar-parlours of taverns; was the gossip of courts and alleys, highways and byways; and though echo, in the guise of a “flying stationer,” caught it up and spread it broadcast in catchpenny sheets, far beyond the confines of the inundation.

This was the more surprising as no dead bodies had been washed down the river, and no lives were reported “lost.” Had the child no one to care for it?—no relative to whom its little life was precious? Had it been abandoned to its fate, a waif unloved, uncared for?