Sublime

But David astonished me. “Poor Mum,” he said, “I guess she’s better off, really.” Now what was I to make of that, from a boy of fourteen?

But I had no time to waste in being humiliated, for when Surgeoner looked me in the face I knew him at once for the tramp I had last seen in the pit at Deptford.

He longed for balance, order, right and pleasure.

For me, Willie’s recall from death is, and will always be, Mrs Dempster’s second miracle.