The lady looked at him as steady as ever: she didn't seem to have understood him.

"It is, mum," says Fixem again; "this is my warrant of distress, mum," says he, handing it over as polite as if it was a newspaper which had been bespoke arter the next gentleman.
'The lady's lip trembled as she took the printed paper.

She cast her eye over it, and old Fixem began to explain the form, but saw she wasn't reading it, plain enough, poor thing.

"Oh, my God!" says she, suddenly a-bursting out crying, letting the warrant fall, and hiding her face in her hands.

"Oh, my God! what will become of us!" The noise she made, brought in a young lady of about nineteen or twenty, who, I suppose, had been a-listening at the door, and who had got a little boy in her arms: she sat him down in the lady's lap, without speaking, and she hugged the poor little fellow to her bosom, and cried over him, till even old Fixem put on his blue spectacles to hide the two tears, that was a-trickling down, one on each side of his dirty face.