I watched the poor little boy, as he and Harvey played during the afternoon, with no little concern of mind. What was I to do with him? Clean and neatly dressed, there was a look of refinement about the child which had nearly all been hidden by rags and dirt. He played gently, and his voice had in it a sweetness of tone, as it fell every now and then upon my ears, that was really winning. Send him back to Mrs. Flint's in Blake's Court? The change I had wrought upon him made this impossible. No, he could not be sent back to Mrs. Flint's, who didn't want the trouble of him. What then?
Do the kind hearts of my little readers repeat the question, "What then?" Do they want very much to know what has become of little Jim Peters?
It is just a year since my boy led him in from the street, and Jim is still in our house. No one came for him. No one inquired about him. No one cared for him. I must take that last sentence back. God cared for him, and by the hand of my tender-hearted son brought him into my comfortable home and said to me, "Here is one of my lambs, astray, hungry and cold. He was born into the world that he might become an angel in heaven, but is in danger of being lost. I give him into your care. Let me find him when I call my sheep by their names."
As I finished writing the last sentence a voice close to my ear said "Mother!" I turned and received a loving kiss from the lips of Jim. He often does this. I think, in the midst of his happy plays, memory takes him back to the suffering past, and then his grateful heart runs over and he tries to reward me with a loving kiss. I did not tell him to call me "Mother." At first he said it in a timid, hesitating way, and with such a pleading, half-scared look that I was touched and softened.
"She isn't your real mother," said Harvey, who happened to be near, "but then she's good and loves you ever so much."
"And I love her," answered Jim, with a great throb in his throat, hiding his face in my lap and clasping and kissing my hand. Since then he always calls me "Mother;" and the God and Father of us all has sent into my heart a mother's love for him, and I pray that he may be mine when I come to make up my jewels in heaven.