My Friend Smith Part 42

You never told me in your letters."

"There wasn't much to tell," I said. "It was awfully slow when you left, I can a.s.sure you."

"But you soon got over that?" said Jack, laughing.

He wasn't far wrong, as the reader knows, but somehow I would have preferred him to believe otherwise. I replied, "There would have been simply nothing to do of an evening if Doubleday--who is a very decent fellow at bottom, Jack--hadn't asked me up to his lodgings once or twice to supper."

I said this in as off-hand a way as I could. I don't know why I had fancied Jack would not be pleased with the intelligence, for Doubleday had never been very friendly to him.

"Did he?" said Jack. "That was rather brickish of him."

"Yes; he knew it would be dull while you were away, and I was very glad to go."

"Rather! I expect he gave you rather better suppers than we get up at Beadle Square, eh?"

"Yes. And then, you know, when I was there I heard where Flanagan was living, and found him out. Do you remember our hunt after him that night, Jack?"

"Don't I! By the way, Fred, has there been any news of the boy?"

"The young thief? I should fancy you'd had enough of him, old man, for a good while to come. But I have seen him."

"Where?" asked Jack, with an interest that quite amused me.

"One would think that after giving you smallpox, and robbing you of your money, you were really under an obligation to the young beggar, and wanted to thank him personally. If you are so very anxious to pay your respects, it's ten to one we shall run across him at the top of Style Street--that's where his place of business is."

"Place of business? What do you mean?"

"I mean that he has spent the money he stole from us in buying a s...o...b..ack's apparatus, and seems to think it's something to be proud of, too," I replied.

Jack laughed. "He might have done worse. My boots want blacking, Fred; let's go round by Style Street."

The young vagabond was there, engaged, as we approached him, in walking round and round his box on the palms of his hands with his feet in the air.

At the sight of us he dropped suddenly into a human posture, and, with a very broad grin on his face, said, "Shine 'e boots, governor? Why, if it ain't t'other flat come back? Shine 'e boots?"

"Yes; I want my boots cleaned," said Jack, solemnly, planting one foot on the box.

The boy dropped briskly on his knees and went to work, making Jack's boot shine as it had never shone before. In the middle of the operation he stopped short, and, looking up, said, "You _was_ a flat that there night, you was!"

I could only laugh at this frank piece of information.

"I think you were the flat!" said Jack, putting up his other foot on the box.

"Me? _I_ ain't no flat, no error!" replied the boy, with a grin. "I'm a sharp 'un, that's what I are!"

"I think you were worse than a flat to steal my money, and my friend's."

The boy looked perplexed. "Ga on!" said he.

"What's your name?" asked Jack, changing the subject.

"Billy," replied the boy.

"Billy what?"

"Ga on! What do you mean by `what'? Ain't Billy enough?"

"Where do you live?"

"Live? where I can; that's where I live!"

"Then you don't live with your mother in that court any longer?"

"The old gal--she ain't no concern of yourn!" said the youth, firing up.

"I know that," said Jack, evidently at a loss, as I had been, how to pursue the conversation with this queer boy. "I say, Billy," he added, "where are you going to sleep to-night?"

"Ain't a-goin' to sleep nowheres!" was the prompt reply.

"Would you like to come and sleep with me?"

"No fear!" was the complimentary reply.

"What are you going to do, then?"

"'Tain't no concern o' yourn; so it ain't."

"Will you be here to-morrow?"

"In corse I shall!"

"Well, I expect I'll want my boots done again to-morrow evening. Here's a penny for this time."

The boy took the penny and held it in the palm of his hand.

"Isn't it enough?" asked Jack.

"You're 'avin' a lark with me," said the boy. "This 'ere brown--"

"What's wrong? It's a good one, isn't it?"

"Oh, ain't you funny? I don't want yer brown!" and to my amazement he tossed the coin back.

Jack solemnly picked it up and put it back into his pocket. "Good- night, Billy," said he. "Mind you are here to-morrow."

"No fear!" said Billy, who was once more resuming his gymnastic exercises.

And so we left him.