"But, with a boy apiece, she and I might start fair.

You could punch his head, brother like." The _Cumberland_ weighed anchor on the 2nd of May, and dropped it again under Staddon Heights on the 29th of that month.

To my delight, the garrison surgeon at Plymouth pronounced me fit to travel: my foot only needed rest, he said; and he asked me where my home lay.
I had anticipated this, and answered that a letter addressed to me under care Miss Amelia Plinlimmon, at the Genevan Foundling Hospital, would certainly find me.

And so I was granted two months' leave of absence to recover from my wound.
"But you don't mean to tell me," said Mr.Jope as we strolled down Union Street together, "that you haven't a home or relations in this world ?" "Neither one nor the other," said I; "but I have picked up a few friends." As he drew westward I noticed that he sensibly retarded his pace: but he had forsworn visiting Symonds's until, as he put it, we knew the worst; and I marched him relentlessly up to the door of doom with its immaculate brass knocker.

And when, facing it, he shut his eyes, I put out a hand and knocked for him.
But it was I who shrank back when the door opened: for the person who opened it was--Mr.George!--in pigtail and wooden leg unchanged, but in demeanour (so far as agitation allowed me to remark it) more saturnine than ever.
"Do the Widow Babbage live here ?" stammered Mr.Jope.
"She do not," answered Mr.George slowly, and added, "worse luck!" "Is--is she dead ?" "No, she ain't," answered Mr.George, and pulled himself up.
"Then what's the matter with her ?" "There ain't nothing the matter with _her_, as I know by," answered Mr.George once more, in a non-committal tone.