Sturdy and Strong Part 3

"I don't want to know none," Bill said positively. "A missionary chap, he came and prayed with an old woman I lodged with once. I could not make head nor tail of it, and she died just the same, so you see what good did it do her?"

But George was too tired to enter upon a theological argument. He was already half asleep, and Bill's voice sounded a long way off.

"Good-night," he muttered; "I will talk to you in the morning," and in another minute he was fast asleep.

Bill took an armful of hay and shook it lightly over his companion; then he closed the door of the loft and threw himself on the hay, and was soon also sound asleep. When George woke in the morning the daylight was streaming in through the cracks of the door. His companion was gone. He heard the voices of several men in the yard, while a steady champing noise and an occasional shout or the sound of a sc.r.a.ping on the stones told him the stalls below were all full now.

George felt that he had better remain where he was. Bill had told him the evening before that the horses and carts generally set out again at about nine o'clock, and he thought he had better wait till they had gone before he slipped down below. Closing his eyes he was very soon off to sleep again. When he woke, Bill was sitting by his side looking at him.

"Well, you are a oner to sleep," the boy said. "Why, it's nigh ten o'clock, and it's time for us to be moving. Ned will be going off in a few minutes, and the stables will be locked up till the evening."

"Is there time to eat our bread and cheese?" George asked.

"No, we had better eat it when we get down to the market; come along."

George at once rose, shook the hay off his clothes, and descended the ladder, Bill leading the way. There was no one in the stable, and the yard was also empty. On reaching the market they sat down on two empty baskets, and at once began to eat their bread and cheese.

CHAPTER II.

TWO FRIENDS.

"I did wake before, Bill," George said after he had eaten a few mouthfuls; "but you were out."

"Yes, I turned out as soon as the carts began to come in," Bill said, "and a wery good morning I have had. One old chap gave me twopence for looking arter his hoss and cart while he went into the market with his flowers. But the best move was just now. A chap as was driving off with flowers, one of them swell West-end shops, I expect, by the look of the trap, let his rug fall. He didn't see it till I ran after him with it, then he gave me a tanner; that was something like. Have yer finished yer bread and cheese?"

"Yes," George said, "and I could manage a drink of water if I could get one."

"There's a fountain handy," Bill said; "but you come along with me, I am agoing to stand two cups of coffee if yer aint too proud to take it;" and he looked doubtfully at his companion.

"I am not at all too proud," George said, for he saw that the slightest hesitation would hurt his companion's feelings.

"It aint fust-rate coffee," Bill said, as with a brightened look on his face he turned and led the way to a little coffee-stall; "but it's hot and sweet, and yer can't expect more nor that for a penny."

George found the coffee really better than he had expected, and Bill was evidently very much gratified at his expression of approval.

"Now," he said, when they had both finished, "for a draw of 'baccy,"

and he produced a short clay pipe. "Don't yer smoke?"

"No, I haven't begun yet."

"Ah! ye don't know what a comfort a pipe is," Bill said. "Why, when yer are cold and hungry and down on your luck a pipe is a wonderful thing, and so cheap; why, a ounce of 'baccy will fill yer thirty pipes if yer don't squeeze it in too hard. Well, an ounce of 'baccy costs threepence halfpenny, so, as I makes out, yer gets eight pipes for a penny; and now," he went on when he had filled and lit his pipe, "let's know what's yer game."

"You mean what am I going to do?" George asked.

Bill nodded.

"I want to get employment in some sort of works. I have been an errand-boy in a grocer's for more than a year, and I have got a written character from my master in my pocket; but I don't like the sort of thing; I would rather work with my own hands. There are plenty of works where they employ boys, and you know one might get on as one gets older. The first thing is to find out whereabouts works of that sort are."

"There are lots of works at the East End, I have heard tell," Bill said; "and then there's Clerkenwell and King's Cross, they aint so far off, and there are works there, all sorts of works, I should say; but I don't know nuffin' about that sort of work. The only work as I have done is holding hosses and carrying plants into the market, and sometimes when I have done pretty well I goes down and lays out what I got in _Echoes_, or _Globes_, or _Evening Standards_; that pays yer, that does, for if yer can sell them all yer will get a bob for eight penn'orth of papers, that gives yer fourpence for an hour's work, and I calls that blooming good, and can't yer get a tuck-out for a bob!

Oh, no, I should think not! Well, what shall it be? I knows the way out to Whitechapel and to Clerkenwell, so whichever yer likes I can show yer."

"If Clerkenwell's the nearest we may as well try that first," George said, "and I shall be much obliged to you for showing the way."

The two boys spent the whole day in going from workshop to workshop for employment; but the answers to his application were unvarying: either he was too young or there was no place vacant. George took the disappointment quietly, for he had made up his mind that he would have difficulty in getting a place; but Bill became quite angry on behalf of his companion.

"This is worse nor the market," he said. "A chap can pick up a few coppers there, and here we have been a-tramping about all day and aint done nothing."

Day after day George set out on his quest, but all was without success. He and Bill still slept in the loft, and after the first day he took to getting up at the same time as his companion, and going out with him to try and pick up a few pence from the men with the market-carts. Every other morning they were able to lie later, as there were only regular marketdays three mornings a week.

On market mornings he found that he earned more than Bill, his better clothes giving him an advantage, as the men were more willing to trust their carts and rugs to the care of a quiet, respectable-looking boy than to that of the arabs who frequented the Garden. But all that was earned was laid out in common between the two boys, and George found himself seldom obliged to draw above a few pence on his private stock.

He had by this time told the Shadow exactly how much money he had, and the boy, seeing the difficulty that George found in getting work, was most averse to the store being trenched upon, and always gave his vote against the smallest addition to their ordinary fare of bread and cheese being purchased, except from their earnings of the day. This George felt was the more creditable on Bill's part, inasmuch as the latter had, in deference to his prejudices, abstained from the petty thefts of fruit with which before he had seasoned his dry crusts.

George had learned now what Bill knew of his history, which was little enough. He supposed he had had a father, but he knew nothing of him; whether he had died, or whether he had cut away and left mother, Bill had no idea. His mother he remembered well, though she had died when he was, as he said, a little chap. He spoke of her always in a hushed voice, and in a tone of reverence, as a superior being.

"We was poor, you know," he said to George, "and I know mother was often short of grub, but she was just kind. I don't never remember her whacking me; always spoke soft and low like; she was good, she was.

She used to pray, you know, and what I remember most is as the night afore she was took away to a hospital she says, 'Try and live honest, Bill; it will be hard, but try, my boy. Don't you take to stealing, however poor you may be;' and I aint," Bill said earnestly over and over again. "When I has seed any chap going along with a ticker handy, which I could have boned and got away among the carts as safe as ninepence, or when I has seed a woman with her purse a-sticking out of them outside pockets, and I aint had a penny to bless myself with, and perhaps nothing to eat all day, I have felt it hard not to make a grab; but I just thought of what she said, and I aint done it. As I told yer, I have often nabbed things off the stalls or out of the baskets or carts. It didn't seem to me as that was stealing, but as you says it is, I aint going to do so no more. Now look yer here, George; they tells me as the parsons says as when people die and they are good they goes up there, yer know."

George nodded, for there was a question in his companion's tone.

"Then, of course," Bill went on, "she is up there. Now it aint likely as ever I should see her again, 'cause, you know, there aint nothing good about me; but if she was to come my way, wherever I might be, and was to say to me, 'Bill, have you been a-stealing?' do yer think she would feel very bad about them 'ere apples and things?"

"No, Bill, I am sure she would not. You see you didn't quite know that was stealing, and you kept from stealing the things that you thought she spoke of, and now that you see it is wrong taking even little things you are not going to take them any more."

"That I won't, so help me bob!" the boy said; "not if I never gets another apple between my teeth."

"That's right, Bill. You see you ought to do it, not only to please your mother, but to please G.o.d. That's what my mother has told me over and over again."

"Has she now?" Bill said with great interest, "and did you use to prig apples and sichlike sometimes?"

"No," George said, "not that sort of thing; but she was talking of things in general. Of doing things that were wrong, such as telling lies and deceiving, and that sort of thing."

"And your mother thinks as G.o.d knows all about it?"

George nodded.

"And that he don't like it, eh, when things is done bad?"

George nodded again.

"Lor', what a time he must have of it!" Bill said in solemn wonder.

"Why, I heard a woman say last week as six children was enough to worrit anyone into the grave; and just to think of all of us!" and Bill waved his arm in a comprehensive way and repeated, "What a time he must have of it!"

For a time the boys sat silent in their loft, Bill wondering over the problem that had presented itself to him, and George trying to find some appropriate explanation in reply to the difficulty Bill had started. At last he said: