When she returned at night, she found things worse, if anything, than before.

The child was dirtier, if that were possible, and there were two great lumps on his head, instead of one.

He had been knocked down by a horse in the street, escaping death by one of the narrowest of chances, and had been discovered and removed from a ladder up which he had climbed a distance of twenty feet.
What help was there?
None that Mrs.Burke knew, except to give up the child, and she was not unselfish enough for this.

The thought of sending him away was always attended with pain.

It would take the light out of her poor lonely life, into which he had brought a few stray sunbeams.
She could not, she would not, give him up.