The String of Pearls (1850), p. 182

mind had been so overthrown, and it jarred upon the feelings of all who heard it.
"Tobias, do you recollect the little cottage down the lane at Holloway, where we lived, and the cock roaches, and the strange cat, you know, Tobias, that would not go away? Don't you recollect, Tobias, how the coals there were all slates, and how your poor father, as is dead and gone "
"Yes, I see him now.''
Mrs. Ragg gave a faint scream.
"Father!—father!" said Tobias, as he held out his arms, and the big tears rolled down his cheeks. "Father—father, Todd has not got me now. Don't cry so, father. Stand out of the way of the elephants."
"My dear! my dear!" cried Mrs. Ragg, "do you want to break my heart?
Tobias rose to a sitting position in the bed, and looked his mother in the face.
"Are you, too, mad?" he said. 'Are you, too, mad? Did you tell of
Todd?"
"Yes, the only way," said Colonel Jeffery, "for people not to be mad, is to tell of Todd."
"Yes—yes."
"And so you, Tobias, will tell us all you know. That is what we want you to do, and then you will be quite happy and comfortable for the remainder of your days, and live with your mother again far from any apprehension Irom I odd.
"Do you understand me?"
Tobias opened his mouth several times in an eager, gasping sort of manner, as though he would have said something rapidly, but he could not. He placed his hands upon his brain, and rocked to and fro for a few moments, and then he broke out into the same low, peculiar laugh that had before so strangely attected
Colonel Jeffery and the others who were there present in that room. The surgeon shook his head as he said, mournfully—
"It is of no use!"
Do you really think so?" said the colonel.
"For the present, I am convinced that it is of no use to attempt to recall his wandering senses. Time will do wonders, and he has the one grand element of youth in his favour. That, as well as time, will do wonders. The case is a bad one, and the shock the brain of this lad has received must be a most fearful one."
"Do not," said Sir Richard Blunt, "give up so readily, Mrs. Ragg; I would have you try him again. Speak to him again of his father— that seemed to be the topic that most moved him."
Mrs. Ragg could hardly do so for her tears, but she managed to stammer out—
"Tobias, do you recollect when your father bought you the rabbit, and out of vexation, the creature eat its way out of a willow-work cage in the night? Do you remember your poor father's funeral, Tobias, and how we went, you and I, my poor boy, to take the last look at the only one who—who—who—"
Mrs. Ragg could get no further.
"Ha—ha—ha!" laughed Tobias, "who told of Todd?"
"Who is this Todd," said the surgeon, "that he continually speaks of, and shudders at the very name of?"
Colonel Jeffery glanced at Sir Richard Blunt, and the latter, who wished the affair by no means to transpire, merely said—
"We are quite as much in the dark as you, sir. It is just what we should like to know, who this Todd is, whose very name seems to hold the imagination of this poor boy in a grasp of iron. I begin to think that nothing more can be done now."
"Nothing, gentlemen, you may depend," said the surgeon." How old is the lad?"
"Sixteen as never was," replied Mrs. Ragg, "and a hard time I had of it, sir, as you may suppose/'