James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“Hold out your hand, then.”

I did so, and he spat in it!

“That’s the sort of shillings I give to cadgers,” said he.

“Ha! ha!” laughed the other young gentleman. “You are the rummest feller that ever I come across, Barney.”

For an instant I felt sick with passion, and would like to have clutched Mr. Barney’s nose as Mrs. Burke had often clutched mine; but my craving for money to buy bread with was so fierce that it would let no other consideration stand in its way. I wiped off the spittle against the wall, and said, civilly—

“ Now, if you please, sir, won’t you give me a penny?”

“Be off!” said Mr. Barney. “You’ve got hold of the wrong customers. We are gentlemen, we are, and don’t want to be bothered by cadgers.”

“Will you give me a ha’penny, then?” I pleaded. “I wouldn’t ask you if I wasn’t so hungry.”

“Give you a ha’penny, you artful young bla’guard!” replied Mr. Ike. “Why, you are better dressed and got a sounder pair of boots on your feet than half the honest boys that run about. Half as good a pair would be good enough to beg in. What’s your opinion, Barney?”

“My opinion is, that he’s one of them saucy whelps that one musn’t be in the least familiar with, but they at once begin to take liberties,” replied the gentleman who had honoured me by spitting in my hand. “We’ll give him in charge of the police if he doesn’t take himself off, Ike.”

It was what Mr. Ike had said, however, that made most impression on me. He was quite right. My boots were bran new boots—given to me only the morning before, that I might go well shod to Stratford. A pair only half as good would be good enough to beg in; no boots at all would be good enough—better, at least, than an empty belly, such as mine was. I felt almost as much obliged to Mr. Ike as though he had placed ready money in my hand. I would sell my boots. They were not mine according to law, it is true; but then—agreeably to Mouldy’s doctrine—it was not according to law that a boy should want a lodging and go hungry. Further, I have no doubt that Mouldy would have argued that the boots were given to me for my comfort, and that if I could get more comfort out of them than by allowing them to remain on my feet, the intention of those who had given the boots to me, so far from being frustrated, would be accommodated beyond their most charitable anticipations. The boots should go. Field Lane was not very far off; and though I never had any dealings with the shopkeepers there residing, I had heard it frequently mentioned, by lads who slept under the dark arches, that the Jews there kept open late for the convenience of their customers, and, moreover, that they were never oversqueamish about what they bought, or in asking questions as to where the goods offered for sale came from.

“Thanky!” said I, to Mr. Ike; “I forgot all about my boots.” And I at once knelt down and began to untie them.

“What d’ yer mean—forgot all about ’em?” asked Mr. Barney.

“I forgot the sort of boots they was—how good they was. I wouldn’t have your penny now, if you was to offer it to me. Keep your pennies to yourself, and your spit too, or p’r’aps you might get half a brick at your head.”

“Come on, Barney,” said Mr. Ike, who was apparently about seventeen years old, while his companion was possibly a year older; “if he annoys us, we’ll give him in charge.”

“Stop a bit. Don’t be in a hurry, Ike.”

“What’s the good of stopping?”

“But see what the young beggar’s doing! He’s pulling his boots off!”

“P’r’aps he’s going to shy ’em at us, like the prisoners in the docks sometimes do,” laughed Mr. Ike. “What are you taking your boots off for, young un?”

“I’m goin’ to sell ’em.”

“Goin’ to sell ’em—eh? Why, you won’t find anybody to buy ’em to-night. Where are you going to take ’em to?”

“I shan’t tell yer. It ain’t no bis’ness o’ yourn.”

“That’s more than you can tell, my boy,” replied Mr. Ike, in a kinder tone than he had yet used, and at the same time dabbing the fire out of his stump of cigar against the wet wall, and pocketing it. “If you’re goin’ to sell ’em there’ll be no harm in my having first look at ’em. Come over to the light of the lamp-post, my lad.”

I had taken off my stockings, (they were new, and made of blue worsted,) and stuffed them into the boots, which I had tied together by their laces, and slung across my shoulder. Taking me by the arm, Mr. Ike led me to the light of the street lamp, and there he took one of the workhouse boots in hand in an astonishingly businesslike manner, looking at it closely, bending its sole, and inquiring carefully into the condition of its welt.

“How much?” asked Mr. Ike, when his inspection was at an end.

“How much what?” I answered, never dreaming that the young gentleman was disposed to buy my boots.

“How much money?—what do you want for ’em? You said that you wanted to sell ’em—didn’t you?”

“I don’t want no more of your larks,” said I, still incredulous that he could be in earnest.

“What odds is it to you what I want for ’em?”

“Do I look like larking, my lad?” asked Mr. Ike, looking at me in a way that was meant to be convincing. “I mean bis’ness. Put your price on ’em, and I’m a buyer.”

I could no longer disbelieve him; yet his question came so sudden that I didn’t know how to answer. How much did I want for the boots?

I recollect my mother giving two-and-ninepence for a pair not half as good at the shop facing the churchyard on Clerkenwell Green. The boots under discussion were such warm, comfortable boots! and standing on the stones with the snow melting under my naked toes, they seemed more valuable than ever.

“I want eighteenpence for ’em,” I said, at last

“How much?—eighteenpence for a pair of boots and stockings like these?”

“No; eighteenpence for the boots without the stockin’s.”

Mr. Ike looked at Mr. Barney, and Mr. Barney returned the look, and then both young men fell to laughing as though I had told them the funniest thing they had ever heard in all their experience.

“Come, come! a joke’s a joke; but we shall never do business unless you talk serious. What do you want for ’em?”

“Eighteenpence—not less—not a penny less. If you don’t know the worth on ’em, I do.”

And truly I did. Each moment, with the cold creeping up my legs, I grew more and more alive to their great value.

“Will you take sixpence?” asked Mr. Ike.

“I’ll take eighteenpence, or I’ll have ’em back. Give ’em here; I don’t want you to buy ’em.”

Mr. Ike tossed his head with the air of a person compelled to submit to an imposition, and tucking the boots under his arm, made a plunge at his trousers’ pocket and took out some money.

“Here you are,” said he, putting the money into my hand; “and now cut your lucky, before I alter my mind.”

He gave me sevenpence—sixpence and a penny; and linking his arm in Mr. Barney’s, was moving off. I caught hold on Mr. Ike’s cloak, and dragged at it.

“ Now what do you want?” said he, looking round with affected astonishment.

“I want another elevenpence, or I want my boots and stockin’s back,” said I.

“Why, you must be out of your mind!” exclaimed Mr. Barney. “We can buy ’em bran new by the gross for less money.”

“But there’s the stockin’s.”

“Ah! I overlooked the stockings. Let’s have a look at ’em.”

I did not set much store by the stockings, never having been used to such luxuries since I had worn boots, until I went to the workhouse; but they were very good ones. Mr. Barney examined them closely, and then folded them up and put them in his pocket.