ace was a commonplace face. I could pick a plain lock, I could cut a plain key; I could bounce a coin and say, from the ring, if the coin were good or bad.—But anyone can do those things, who is taught them. All about me other infants came, and stayed a little, then were claimed by their mothers, or found new mothers, or perished; and of course, no-one claimed me, I did not perish, instead I grew up, until at last I was old enough to go
among the cradles with the bottle of gin and the silver spoon myself. Mr Ibbs I would seem sometimes to catch gazing at me with a certain light in his eye—as if, I thought, he was seeing me suddenly for the piece of poke I was, and wondering how I had come to stay so long, and who he could pass me on to. But when people talked—as they now and then did—about blood, and its being thicker than water, Mrs Sucksby looked dark.
''Come here, dear girl,'' she''d say. ''Let me look at you.'' And she''d put her hands upon my head and stroke my cheeks with her thumbs, brooding over my face. ''I see her in you,'' she''d say. ''She is looking at me, as she looked at me that night. She is thinking that she''ll come back and make your fortune. How could she know? Poor girl, she''ll never come back! Your fortune''s still to be made. Your fortune, Sue, and ours along with it..."
So she said, many times. Whenever she grumbled or sighed— whenever she rose from a cradle, rubbing her sore back—her eyes would find me out, and her look would clear, she''d grow contented.