James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“Oh! ah! I recollect now, Smiffield!” said Mouldy, seriously; “it was seized with the rest of our furniture when we had the brokers in the other day. Get out with you! comin’ and cockin’ it over us with your talk about beds. Hark here! this is our bed”—and he rapped with his boot-heel on the boards—“if it ain’t soft enough for you, get underneath; which it’s mud up to your ankles.”

“Don’t you mind him,” observed the softer-hearted Ripston, when he had had his laugh out; “it ain’t so comfor’ble as in general, Smiffield, ’cos of the want of straw. Why, sometimes we finds as much straw in this wan as would fill—well, a sack I was goin’ to say, but werry nigh. That’s fine, don’t you know! Just you fancy comin’ in on a cold night, thinkin’ what a precious miserable cove you are, and how you are a-goin’ to get them aches agin in all the knobby parts of your bones wot presses agin the planks! You think this, and reg’ler in the blues you climbs up into your wan, and there you finds a whole lot of straw—dry straw mind you—and you’ve only got to rake it together, and bury your head and shoulders in it! Oh!”

And the bare recollection of the luxury made Ripston draw in his breath, with a noise as though he was sipping hot and delicious soup.

“But isn’t it cold when you undress yourself?” I asked.

“Dunno,” replied Ripston, shortly; “never tried it.”

“Never tried undressing yourself to go to bed?”

“The last time I was undressed,—altogether, don’t you know,” said Ripston, “was—ah, last August, if I recollects right. It was when the plums was ripe, anyhow. You recollects the time, Mouldy; the werry last time we went into the Serpentine. Lor’ bless your silly young eyes, Smiffield; if we was to go undressin’ and coddlin’ of ourselves up, what time do you think we should get up in the mornin’? We’ve got our livin’ to get, don’t you know?”

“We sha’n’t be up very early to-morrow mornin’ if we don’t mind,” yawned Mouldy; “it must be close upon twelve now. Come on; let’s turn in if we’re a-goin to.”

“I’m ready,” replied Ripston. “Stop a bit, though—who’s a-goin’ to be piller?”

I didn’t know in the least what Ripston meant, so I took no notice of his question.

“There’s alwis a shyness about bein’ pillar when there ain’t no straw,” laughed Ripston.

“Will you be piller, Smiffield?” asked Mouldy.

I felt so perfectly wretched that I didn’t care what I was; I told them so.

“Well, we don’t want to be hard on you,” observed Mouldy; “but now that there’s three on us, we may as well enjoy ourselves. You haven’t no call to be piller without you like, you know.”

“It’s all accordin’ to what sort of a taste you’ve got,” said Ripston; “some fellows don’t care how cold they lay, so long as they lay soft. Other fellows are all t’other way, and ’ud sooner sleep in a brick-kil than anywheres. How do you like it, Smiffield?”

“I like to sleep warm, and soft as well,” was my tearful answer.

“What! and both at once, I s’pose,” sneered Mouldy. “I wish you might get it. If you’re goin’ to be piller, down with you; if you ain’t, say so, and let somebody else. We don’t want no snivellin’ in our wan neither, so I can tell yer, jolly young watery head! I’m sorry as we was fools enough to take up with yer!”

I hastened as well as I was able to explain to Mouldy that I was crying because I couldn’t help it, and not to give him offence. I assured him that I was quite willing to do anything to make things comfortable; and that if he would show me how to be pillow, I would go at it at once.

“It don’t want no showing,” replied Mouldy, somewhat mollified. “Piller’s the one that lays down for the others to lay their heads on. There can’t be anything plainer than that, can there? He’s soft for their heads; and they keeps him warm. That squares it comfor’ble, don’t yer see?” “Here, out of the way,” exclaimed Ripston, at the same time huddling down into a corner of the van; “don’t let us have any more talk about it; I’m piller; come on.”

“Now, you do as I do, Smiffield,” exclaimed Mouldy, at the same time laying down. But to do as he did was impossible. In the greediest, manner he monopolised the whole of Ripston’s body, leaving no “piller” for my head to repose on but such as was afforded by Ripston’s legs. But there was no use in grumbling, so down I lay.

“Do you feel like going to sleep right off, Rip?” asked Mouldy, after a silence of a few minutes.

“’Course I does; I was half off then, afore you spoke; don’t you feel like goin’ to sleep, Mouldy?”

“I never do somehow arter them combats. My eyes! fancy three coves a-breakin’. into your ship like that, and you only with your shirt and trowsis, and a pair of cutlashes to defend yourself!” “Yes, they puts things on the stage werry neat at that Shoreditch gaff,” replied Ripston, sleepily; “good night.”

“Good night”

There was another lull of about a minute’s duration, and then Mouldy spoke again.

“Sleep, Rip?”

No answer.

“D’ye hear? Sleep, old Rip?”

“Gallus me if I’ll be piller at all if you don’t keep quiet,” replied Ripston, savagely; “ now, what’s the matter?”

“I never see such a chap as you; you never likes to lay awake and talk about what you’ve seen,” said Mouldy, in a conciliatory tone.

“Do you mean to say as you’ve woke a fellow up to tell him that! ” said Ripston, with increased ferocity.

“I was on’y goin’ to ask you a question, Rip. Do you think it was a real body which the robbers chucked down the well?”

“I’m certain on it; I see’d a hand of it through a hole in the sack,” replied Ripston, maliciously.

“And do you think it was a reg’ler well, Rip; a reg’ler out-and-out well, right into the bowels of the earth, like Sir Gasper said it was?”

“No doubt on it,” responded Ripston.

“I didn’t hear no splash,” urged Mouldy.

“That was ’cos you listened too quick,” said Ripston. “Bein’ so precious deep, you couldn’t ’spect to hear the splash all at once. I heard it about three minutes arterwards.”

Mouldy breathed very hard, but made no reply. He continued to breathe hard for a considerable time, as though he had something on his mind. Presently he gently called Ripston again, but Ripston instantly began to snore in a manner that put all chance of waking him, by any means short of actual assault, quite out of the question. After a second attempt he desisted, and inclining his head towards me, whispered my name. But I was in no humour for conversation, and I, too, affected to be asleep, and made him no reply.

But I was not asleep by a very long way. With my cheek all wet with tears, as it lay pressing the calf of Ripston’s leg, I remained awake thinking of my past career, the foolish step I had taken, and what were my prospects. How different might everything have been by this time, if I had only found pluck enough to have taken the thrashing that Mrs. Burke gave me, as I had taken thrashings almost if not quite as violent, dozens and scores of times! How much better it would have been, even, if when Jerry Pape seized me I had gone home, and once more faced my father and his terrible waist strap! By this time at least it would have been all over, and I should have been snug in my warm bed, in the back-room—snug in bed, and cuddling little Polly. No doubt I should have as yet not quite have done smarting; but at that moment it would have been difficult to have shown me a smart that I would not cheerfully have accepted and endured, the reward for which was that I should be immediately afterwards translated to Fryingpan Alley, with free admission at Number Nineteen, and all my iniquities forgiven.