"Seemed to 'ave 'andled the tricky first bit quite well," Dodger said, since that seemed like the most difficult part of mothering, to him, just bringing a baby into the world at all. He couldn't remember his own mother, and he'd grown up surrounded by other orphans whose mothers had died, been taken away to the poorhouse, or were otherwise unable or too neglectful to care for them. That was his personal experience: not knowing a mother, and wondering what it would've been like to have one.

"You're... soft, and kind, and caring. That's what a mother's supposed to be, ain't it?" It's what he'd always envisioned a real mother to be like, anyhow.