James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

I was very glad to hear him say this.

“You think, then, that I should do at it, Mouldy?”

“How do yer mean—‘do at it’?”

“Please the man what I worked for—earn my livin’.”

“Well, you might please the man what you worked for, but as for earning your livin’”—and Mouldy finished his remark by jerking his thumb over his shoulder with a manner that was not to be misunderstood.

“It might suit some coves, don’t yer know,” he continued; “but it didn’t suit me. Likewise it didn’t suit Ripston.”

“Then you’ve tried,it?” I asked, with sinking spirits.

“’Course we have. There’s very little we hain’t tried—eh, Ripston? Yes, we’ve tried it, and so has a whole lot of chaps we knows; and what they say is just what we say, and that is, that you won’t ketch ’em at it again. There! I’d sooner be a doctor’s cove, and go about in a Skillington suit with roly buttons. Wouldn’t you, Rip?”

“A’most,” replied Ripston. “It is a life! You’re up in the mornin’ afore you can see, and fust thing it’s drivin’ the barrow to market while the man what you works for walks on the path; then it’s mindin’ the barrow while he goes and buys and loads up; then it’s home agin with it, find, if it’s wegetables, washin’ it and settin’ of it out; then it’s paddlin’ about all day long a-hollerin’ of it out.”

“And that hain’t all,” said Mouldy. “S’pose it has been a bad day, and the stock’s of a handy sort, what’ll go in a basket—such as inguns for picklin’, or turmut reddishes—out you go agin by yourself in the evenin’, a-hawkin’ and a-hollerin’ of it, till there ain’t no lights in the houses ’cept in the top winders, and it’s too late to try any longer. And arter all, what’ll you get? Why, your wittles. That’s right—ain’t it, Ripston?”

“’Cept about the wittles; them you don’t always get.”

This was not a little alarming. From the very first I had made up mind to become a barker; it was that resolution, indeed, and the fancy that it could be brought about so easily—provided I had any music in my voice—which had all along backed up my yearning to leave home. It was the conviction that I had got a musical voice, as was proved by my trials of it in the pig market at Smithfield, which had induced me to go along with Mouldy and the other boy as soon as I was given to understand that they were going near to Covent Garden. Nobody, however, had told me that a barker’s life was a jolly one. The young man who had assisted at my father’s marriage with Mrs. Burke had merely mentioned that he had taken to barking to escape from a job which.

to his mind, was worse than shoring oysters; and Mrs. Winkship had, after all, said very little in its praise. True, she had drawn a very nice picture of herself, with her silk handkerchief over her shoulders, and without a bonnet, and with half a sieve of ripe greengages under her arm, and making a pretty pocket by strolling round the squares with them on a summer’s afternoon, and she had related the little incident to me while describing the particulars of the barking business; but really it had no more to do with barking than with bricklaying. Now here were two boys who had tried the trade of barking, and both of them had abandoned it in disgust. They had found something better to do. What was it?

“What do you chaps do for a livin’?” I asked.

“What do we do? Oh, anythink!” replied Mouldy, vaguely.

By this time we all three had got out of the van, and were making our way towards the passage through which we had come the night before.

“What do you mean by anythink?”

“Well, we picks it up,” Ripston explained. “We keeps our eyes open, and when we sees a chance we grabs at it.”

“Then you don’t go at anything reg’ler?”

“Oh yes, we goes at everythink reg’ler,” replied Mouldy, laughing. “It’s no use bein’ pertickler, don’t you know; you’re ’bliged to do it to pick a crust up. It’s all chance work. Sometimes it’ll run as high as roast pork—sittin’ down to it, mind yer? not eatin’ it goin’ along—and another time it hain’t a lump of bread from the time you turns out in the mornin’ till you turns in again at night. It’s all luck.”

“Ah! but the best on it is, you never knows when the luck is goin’ to change,” interposed Ripston. “It’s that wot keeps the pluck in you. You thinks that your luck is dead out, and that it is no use expectin’ it ever to come back again; you turns round a corner, and steps into it slap up to your neck. Why, look on’y at yesterday arternoon! All day long not a mag;—no drop of coffee the fust thing; no breakfus’, no dinner—no nothink, ’cept wegetables and that sweepin’s! Mouldy he gets down on his luck—which you do, Mouldy, sooner than you ought sometimes—and ses he, ‘Wot’s the use of us a-prowlin’ and a-shiverin’ out here any longer, Rip? I thinks we’d better make our ways back to the ’Delphi; it’s warmer there than out here.’ ‘Let’s try a bit longer,’ ses I; ‘let’s go round the market three times, and then if nothing don’t turn up, we’ll go home.’ When, scarcely was the words out of my mouth, when somebody hollers, ‘Hi!’ and there was a gen’lman under the columade as wanted a cab fetched. Mouldy fetched it, which was sixpence for hisself, and a penny the cabman, made sevenpence. So there we was, you see! ’Stead of goin’ miser’ble back to the arches, and having to wait p’r’aps three or four hours till your wan came in, there was fippence for grub, and tuppence for the gaff which you see us a-comin’ from last night. We often goes to the gaff—don’t we, Mouldy?”

“We goes to a benefit to-morrow night, if it can be made to run to it,” Mouldy replied.

“Stunnin’ piece out too, it is,” said Ripston; “‘The Wampire Captain; or, the Pirate of the Desert.’ Leastways, it oughter to be a stunnin’ piece, from the name it’s got.”

“Names is nothink,” observed Mouldy. “Look at ‘Bleareye, the Bloodsucker,’ wot we went to see—wot we went without a bit of wittles all day long to see; and wot did it turn out? Why, Bleareye wasn’t a bloodsucker at all; he was on’y a common sort of a cove as lent money a-purpose to ruin young lords, and bring ’em to the work’us. Jigger such pieces as that!”

“Did you ever see a play, Smiffield?” asked Ripston.

“Only in a show,” I replied.

“What? a carrywan what a horse draws, I s’pose! It’s werry little you knows about plays then, Smiffield,” said Ripston, laughing contemptuously. “The place where we go is a reg’ler theatre, don’t yer know—reg’ler stage, and fightin’ with real swords, and characters dressed up real—all welvet, and gold, and diamonds—and blue fire, and that! You ought to go, Smiffield, if you’ve never been.”

By this time we had got out into the Strand, which was very quiet, as well it might be, for just then the churches chimed out five o’clock. Then Mouldy brought us to a stand-still.

“Look here,” said he to me; “afore we goes any furder, how are we goin’ on? Are you goin’ down to the river, or to Common Garden along with me and Ripston?”

“I should like to go with you, if you’ll let me.”

“Let you! there ain’t no lettin’s in it. Common Garden is as free to you as to us. The thing is, how are you goin’ to work?”

“I don’t know anything about the work, let alone how I am goin’ to do it,” I replied; “that’s what I want to go with you for, so that you might put me in the way of it.”

“What Mouldy means,” observed Ripston, “is this—are you goin’. to work on your own hook, or are you goin’ pardeners with us?”