He seemed to like his mother. If she herself could be good to Ben — so Ellen Biggs saw it — then his family could too. But if it didn't work, and he turned up here again, then she would go with him to the Public Records Office and find out about his age. She was so confused about this she had given up trying to puzzle it out. He repeated that he was eighteen, and she had to believe him. In many ways he was childish, and yet when she took a good look at that face she could even think him middle-aged, with those lines around his eyes. Little ones, but still: no eighteen-year-old could have them. She had actually gone so far in her thoughts to wonder if the people he belonged to, whoever they were, matured early, in which case they would die young, according to our ideas. Middle-aged at twenty, and old at forty, whereas she, Ellen Biggs, was eighty and only just beginning to feel her age to the point that she hoped she would not have to make that annoying journey to the Records Office, and then stand in a line: the thought made her tired and cross. She fell asleep, listening to Ben dream, and woke to find him gone. The paper with her address had gone, and the ten-pound note she had left for him. Although she had expected it, now she had to sit down, her hand pressing on a troubled heart. Since he had come into her life, weeks ago, foreboding had come too. Sitting alone when he had gone off somewhere she was thinking, Where's Ben? What is he doing? Was he being cheated again? Far too often had she heard from him, 'They took my money,' — 'They stole everything.' The trouble was, information came out of him in a jumble.

'When was that, Ben?'

'It was summer.'

'No, I mean, what year?'

'I don't know. It was after the farm.'

'And when was that?'

'I was there two winters.'

She knew he was about fourteen when he left his family. So what had he been doing for four years?