James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“Oh, yes! they ’re good at gettin’ out of the way, ain’t they? Quite perlite; and stands up and makes bows and curtseys to you when you come their road, I shouldn’t wonder!” sneered Ripston. “How about the old woman as they part eat the other night; eh, Mouldy? They wasn’t werry perlite to her.”

“You hold your jaw and come on, that’s quite enough for you to do; or p’r’aps you might be made,” replied Mouldy, threateningly; and Master Ripston, taking the hint, said no more.

It was a horrible place. How large, it was impossible to guess; but that it had reeking brick walls could be plainly made out by the light of the few glimmering tallow candles stuck here and there. These scarce scraps of candle were the only means of light, and each of them evidently was private property, and set up for the convenience of the individuals to whom it belonged, and who were lazily grouped about it.

About twenty yards from the spot at which we entered, there was one of these bits of candle stuck against the wall, supported by an old “corkscrew” knife, the screw being wedged in between the green wet bricks, and the broken blade serving as a candle-holder. The light was about three feet from the ground, and squatted in the reflection of it was a ragged and dirty old man, mending a boot. He had the lid of a fish-basket for a seat, and his tools were an old dinner fork and a bit of twine. The fork was for boring holes in the leather; and when he had made a hole, the old man would straighten the end of the twine between his lips, and hold up the dilapidated boot to the candlelight, the better to see where to make the hitch. He had spectacles on—at least a pair of rims, with one glass in—and certainly it did make a queer picture to see the old fellow puckering up his mouth, and with his head on one side, making the most of the solitary glass; his hand shaking so all the while, that even when he had spied the hole in which the twine was to go, he was quite half a minute before he could make good the stitch. Besides revealing him, the old man’s candle shone on the wheel and side of a cart a few yards distant. The body of the cart was hidden in the darkness, but, as might be known by their laughing and scrambling, there were several boys in it, and they were amusing themselves by pelting the old man’s candle with mud.

“It’s old Daddy Riddle, isn’t it?” observed Ripston, as the boys stopped for a moment to see the fun.

“Yes, the old beggar,” replied Mouldy. “Serve him right. Ha! ha! See that, Smiffield?” (it was because a dab of mud struck the old man on the forehead that Mouldy laughed.) “Hain’t it a lark?”

“Why does it serve him right? What has he done to them?” I asked.

“What’s he done? Why, he’s a miser,” replied Mouldy, with much disgust. “They do say that all his money—hundreds and thousands, and all in gold—is hid under a stone somewheres under these arches. Lor’ send we might fall acrost that stone—eh, Rip?”

But Ripston was otherwise engaged, and couldn’t answer. A well-aimed lump of mud had knocked the boot out of the miser’s hand just as he was succeeding in pushing his twine through a hole he had bored, and now he was on his hands and knees groping in the dark to find his old boot again. Such a roar of laughter arose from the cart where the boys were, as made the vaulted roof ring again, and Ripston laughed as loud as anybody.

“Do let me finish the job, there’s good lads,” exclaimed the old man, when he had found his property. “If you’ll only leave off pelting just as long as I can put half-a-dozen more stitches, you shall have the candle to toss or play cards by, just as you like.”

“All right, daddy; sing us another song, and we’ll be mum as hysters,” called some one from the cart.

“Well, well, what shall I sing you?”

“Jolly Nose,” “Hot Codlings,” “Tippity Witchit.”

Hot codlings, however, were in a majority; and in his high, cracked, shaky voice the old man began the song, at the same time making the most of the truce time to finish his cobbling. When he had got through the first verse, and began the “Right tol tiddy-iddy” chorus, the boys joined in it, and just when the old man least expected it, a dab of mud was thrown, completely plastering over the solitary spectacle glass, and then another, extinguishing the candle against the wall with a hiss, and bringing it to the ground, while the mirth in the cart grew more uproarious than before.

“Come on,” exclaimed Mouldy; “it’s no use stopping here any longer; our wan’s up at the furder end.”

Catching tight hold on the tails of Mouldy’s coat, I followed in his footsteps in the direction indicated.

Evidently he as well as his friend Ripston was used to the place; for while they stepped along without hesitation, I could scarcely put one foot before the other without slipping along the oozy floor, or running foul of cart-shafts and trace-chains, which the little light shed by the few candles failed to render distinguishable from the thick darkness. Besides, nobody’s candle but the one by which the old “miser” (he was a poor old used-up Punch-and-Judy man, as I afterwards ascertained) was mending his boots, had a chance of showing much light about the place, each one being surrounded by a mob of boys and young men, squatting, some on the wet ground, and some on wisps of straw, playing cards or gambling with halfpence. As could be seen, some of the players had a bottle amongst them, and all were smoking short pipes, and swearing and laughing at a fine rate.

Presently we came to a standstill.

“Hold hard, Smiffield; this is our wan,” said Mouldy; and the next instant I could hear him, although I could not see him, climbing the sprites of the waggon-wheel.

“How is it?” asked Ripston.

“All right,” replied Mouldy, from the van.

“Up you goes, then,” observed Ripston to me. “Here, put your foot on the spokes, and I’ll give you a bunch up.”

He did so. He “bunched” me so hard, that I was bundled hands and knees on to the floor of the vehicle.

As Ripston was climbing in, he was heard to sniff loudly. “I thought as how you said it was all right?” said he, addressing Mouldy, in a disappointed voice. “You hain’t got no straw in there, I’ll lay a farden.”

“Not a mite,” replied Mouldy.

“I know’d it,” returned Ripston. “I know’d it as soon as my nose came acrost the wheel.

‘Hallo!’ thinks I, ‘it’s been coals to-day.’ Jigger coals, I say;” and the young fellow floundered sulkily into the van.

“I should give warnin’, if I was you Rip,” observed Mouldy, playfully. “I should write to the cove as the wan belongs to, and tell him that if he can’t keep off coals, and do nothink else ’cept move goods, so that there may alwis be a good whack of straw left in the wan, you cert’ny must change your lodgin’s.”

“It ain’t on’y there bein’ no straw,” replied Ripston, savagely, “it’s the jolly coal dust that gets up your nose when the wind blows underneath and up the cracks. What do you say, Smiffield?”

“Is this where we are goin’ to sleep?”

“This is the crib, and you are welcome to a share on it,” replied Mouldy, hospitably.

“But whereabouts is the bed?” I asked.

“The what? ” asked Mouldy.

“The bed. There is a bed, isn’t there?”

“Oh, yes; a stunner; all stuffed choke full of goose’s feathers, and a lot of pillars and blankets, and that. They’re about here somewheres!” And Mouldy went round the van scraping with his foot “Where is that bed, Rip?” continued he; “jiggered if I can find it.”

Ripston, whose appreciation of his friend’s fun was of the keenest, only laughed, without answering.