James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“Fact is, Smiffield, you’re funkin’; that’s what you’re a-doin’ of,” said Mouldy. “The ’greement was, that you wouldn’t funk; and here you are, chockful of it.”

“Not exactly funkin’,” I replied. “If it ain’t thievin’, it’s all right I thought that it was.”

“Bless you, when you gets as old as I am, you’ll know better ’un to take fright at words,” said Mouldy. “Why, when I was a kid, and lived at home with my old ’oman, I’ve set and I’ve heerd the old man a-readin’ the newspaper to her; and you wouldn’t believe how jolly careful even such artful coves as lawyers are ’bliged to be about the names they give things. Unless a chap is bowl’d out in right down reg’ler priggin’, they dursn’t call him a thief. They comes it mild, and calls it ‘ ’bezelment,’ or ‘petty larsny.’ Why, it’s no wus than petty larsny if a cove nails a loaf off a baker’s counter; and as for ’bezelment!—my eyes, Smiffield!—if you calls sneakin’ a handful of nuts thievin’, I suppose you’d call what the law calls ’bezelment, highway robbery! ’Sides, s’pose it was as bad as ’bezelment, what ’ud you get for it? Ripston ’bezeled a milk-can once, and on’y got fourteen days for it. Didn’t you, Ripston?”

“Ripston don’t want that chucked in his face,” waspishly replied the person alluded to. “If we comes to rakin’s up of private histories, p’r’aps I might know coves wot had got more ’un fourteen days, not to speak of private-whippin’s. Howsomever, I won’t mention no names. If the cap fits the cove I means, he’d better hold his jaw; that’s all I’ve got to say.”

Mouldy was evidently the “cove” hinted at, for he only further made some muttered remark about Ripston being a disagreeable beggar, and then, after a little commonplace conversation, (during which Mouldy and Ripston became reconciled,) my two partners dropped off to sleep.

But, as on the preceding night, I had a bad time of it before I could get to sleep. The arguments used by my companions had failed to convince me. Besides, the abrupt termination to our discourse on the matter, and the nature of the remark that had induced it, was not lost on me. Private whipping and imprisonment for a fortnight was never visited on boys whose ways were as simple as Mouldy and Ripston would make me believe theirs were. True, I didn’t know anything of the fine distinctions of the law, and it was very probable that snatching a few nuts was not a felony. Anyhow, I was quite satisfied to admit the probability; but, come what might, I would never do anything of the kind again. What I would do, I couldn’t quite make up my mind. I must get my living somehow. I must tell Mouldy and Ripston in the morning that I meant to be quite honest, to avoid all acts of that sort, and live by picking up jobs in Covent Garden market; and that if they didn’t like to keep my company, I couldn’t help it. I got so well into my mind that this was what I would do, that presently I went off to sleep quite comfortable.

And that, I am sorry to tell, is all the good that came of my penitent thoughts of that night. I woke in the morning chilly, and dirty-feeling, and wretched—much more miserable than on the morning before. My teeth chattered; my inside seemed all of a shiver; and I felt as though I would have given the jacket off my back for a drink of hot coffee. Mouldy had the price of it in his pocket. Just as we were about to turn out of the Strand the night before, Mouldy had held a horse for a gentleman who went into an oyster-shop, and earned sixpence. Fourpence we had spent, and there was twopence left. Had the sixpence turned up early in the evening, we should all three have gone to the gaff in Shoreditch with it; but, as it was, we bought some bread and fried fish for supper, and saved twopence for some coffee in the morning.

“What sort of morning is it?” asked Ripston of Mouldy, who was looking out.

“A precious bad ’un,” was the answer; “it’s a-rainin’ hard; I can see the drops bobbin’ in the river.”

“What will we do now, then?” said I.

“What d’yer mean?” replied Ripston.

“We shall get wet through if we go out in the rain.”

“Did yer ever hear such a cove?” exclaimed Ripston, laughing. “Here, Mouldy, s’pose you goes on fust, and borrows a top coat or a silk umbrella for Smiffield! Why, yer jolly young fool, the rain will make your hair curl! Come on.”

And out we went, shivering over the wet pavement, and splashing in the mud. It wasn’t a sharp rain that was falling, but a steady, close rain; and long before we got to the coffee stall.

I could feel my shirt sticking to my shoulders, and my trousers to my knees. I hadn’t forgotten what I had made up my mind to do last night—indeed it came into my head the moment I woke—and I had been trying to screw up my courage to tell ’em what I meant all the time we bad been plodding through the rain; but how could I screw my courage up? Here I was—bitterly cold and hungry, wet through to the skin, and with nothing in the world to fall back on, if I fell out with Mouldy and Ripston!

“Two pen’orth of stunnin’ hot coffee—in three cups, Mister,” said Mouldy to the stallkeeper.

It was all over. Had it been any one else’s coffee, it might have put heart in me to have up and spoke my mind; but as it was Mouldy’s coffee, it warmed me towards him as I drank it, and made me think that, after all, he wasn’t a bad sort of chap, and that it would be a shame to turn round and snub him with his ways of living. If I didn’t hold with the said ways, certainly I had no business to let him stand treat to me out of ’em. Besides, there didn’t seem much danger of anything very wrong being done to-day; for though it still wanted a quarter to six by the market clock, there was plenty of bustle and running about, and before we had finished our coffee, Mouldy said—

“Come, look alive, you two; we oughter do werry tidy this mornin’. Don’t you know, Smiffield, that them as don’t mind doin’ their own fetchin’s and carryin’s when it’s dry, would rather pay than do it when it rains?”

And so we found. From six o’clock till ten—it raining all the time—we were never once waiting for a job; and when the trade fell off, and we found time to talk together, it turned out that we had been doing splendidly. I had earned elevenpence; Ripston, one and three-halfpence; Mouldy, ninepence halfpenny. I felt a deal more proud of having earned more than Mouldy this morning, than I did yesterday, when he told me that I could crib things off a stall better than he could. Indeed it was so nice to hold that handful of coppers—all hard earned, at a penny and a halfpenny a time—that in spite of being wringing wet to the skin, and of having a nasty cut under my big toe, through treading on a broken bottle, I should have been happier than ever before in my life if it had not been that those almonds haunted me so. I was all the happier, too, to find that, having been able to earn enough for their wants, neither Mouldy nor Ripston had taken so much as an apple. I was half afraid it would have been otherwise, and was glad to hear Mouldy say, when we had given him our earnings, (he was money-holder always,)—”There, now, that’s jest what I calls a werry respectable mornin’s work.”

“Better than gettin’ things wrong, and sellin’ ’em; eh, Mouldy?” I took courage to remark.

“’Course it’s better,” he replied; “there’s more on it.”

“I wish I was ’bliged to work, and not—not do t’other,” I said.

“Don’t know about bein’ ’bliged to do it,” replied he; “it’s werry well while it lasts, but the wust on it is, it don’t last; and then, if you was tied to it, and couldn’t turn your hand to nothink else, you’d find it rather a pinch at times. Take things as they comes; that’s my motter.”