James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

What chiefly attracted my attention, however, was the part of a loaf on the tea-tray. I took it up.

“May I eat this?” I inquired; and as I asked, my ravening hunger overleaping my manners, I bit a big piece out of it.

By way of an answer, Mr. Barney caught me a whack on the knuckles with the tin match-box he still held in his hand, and sent the bread rolling amongst the mouldy boots and shoes. My will was good to scramble after it, but so was Mr. Ike’s; he pounced on and secured it with the agility of a terrier after an escaping rat.

“Quite enough of that, young feller,” said he, rubbing the dirt off the bread on the leg of his trousers; “if you’re a thief, the sooner you get out of this, the better. A pretty feller you are to ask up into a place where there is property lying about!”

And he cast an anxious eye over the valuables strewing the room, and was about to put the precious loaf on a high shelf out of my reach, when Mr. Barney, licking his rosy lips and winking at his friend, took it out of his hand. After regarding it anxiously for a moment, and weighing it on his palm, said he:—

“Now, look here, young work’us; there’s no mistake about it, you are hungry, and it goes to my heart to see it. I won’t be hard on you—I couldn’t. Here you are. Now, don’t say another word about them rubbishing boots and stockings of yours. I don’t mind being soft-hearted and foolish, so much as I mind being put in mind of it. Good-bye! Never mind about gratitude and all that sort of thing.”

And as he spoke, he took a shilling out of his pocket, and laying it a-top of the half-loaf, pressed the lot on my acceptance. If I hadn’t tasted the bread, I believe that I should still have held out; but, as it was, I was powerless to refuse so tempting an offer. I took the shilling, and putting it into my breeches pocket, was deep in the loaf in an instant.

“That’s all, isn’t it?” observed Mr. Barney, with the room door open and the door-knob in his hand, as though anxious for me to go, now that the bargain was completed.

“That’s all, as far as the boots and stockings go,” I replied, through a mouthful of delicious bottom-crust.

“What do you mean? What does he mean, Ike?” asked Mr. Barney, innocently.

“Ain’t you goin’ to buy the coat and things?” said I; “wasn’t that what you meant when we was in the street, just now—when you said something about eighteen shillings?”

“Eighteen shillings!” repeated Mr. Ike, taking up one of the bobtails and snapping the material between his finger and thumb to test it; “why, you’d never be such a young fool as to take eighteen shillings for a suit like that, would you?” He spoke so seriously, that I thought to be sure he meant it; and a spasm of alarm twitched me, to think what a daring scoundrel I must be to run away with so much money’s worth.

“Yes,” I replied; “give us hold of the money. I don’t mind takin’ it. I don’t think the clothes becomes me; that’s what I want to sell ’em for.” Mr. Barney fumbled at his pocket.

“Well, since you are ready to take such a little price for the suit,” said he, “of course, it ain’t for me as a buyer to offer you any more. Here you are.”

He held out some money in his hand—eighteen-pence.

“ That isn’t eighteen shillin’s!”

“Eighteen grandmothers, you young fool! what do you take me for!” laughed Mr. Barney, derisively. “That’s the price; take it or leave it.” “If I bought ’em, I should buy ’em in the scale,” said Mr. Ike; “they’re on’y fit to tear up for land rags. Institootion rubbish! Shouldn’t buy ’em at all if I was you, Barney.”

My heart, which was just now at my throat, as people say, at the prospect of becoming the possessor of the enormous sum of eighteen shillings, sank again heavy as lead with this cruel disappointment.

“You ought to buy ’em, after you said you would,” I said.

“I’ll stand to my word,” replied Mr. Barney, tossing the shilling and sixpence in the air and catching it again.

“What’s the use of eighteenpence? I shall have to buy some more clothes if I sell these; I couldn’t buy ’em for the money.”

Barney once more took me in hand, and closely examined the quality of my breeches and my waistcoat and my bobtail; he unbuttoned my waistcoat, and plucking out a handful of my shirt, examined that too.

“Oh, don’t let’s be hard on him,” said he, appealing to Mr. Ike; “we shan’t be no poorer a hundred years to come, Ike. Don’t you see how it is, Ike?—the lad’s clothes fit him a little too tight, and he wants to get out of ’em.”

At this joke both gentlemen laughed tremendously, and as by this time I had eaten nearly all the bread, and felt courageous, I laughed too.

“Oh, well, as long as you understand each other, I don’t care. It’s all very fine about not being hard on him, Barney; don’t you be too hard on me. I’ve got to stand half the loss, don’t you know?” said Mr. Ike.

“Nobody was ever the poorer for doing a good action, Ike; that’s what I believe,” replied Mr. Barney, who straightway began to overhaul the pile of tattered garments on the bench. After some searching, he fished out a large-sized pair of fustian trousers—wretched-looking things, tattered fore and aft, and black with greasy wear.

“There’s a bit of stuff, now!” he exclaimed, finding a comparatively clean inch or two of the fustian, near the waistband, and holding it up to the light of the lamp; “never was bought under four shillings a yard! They’re the sort of trousers now to do you service, if I could afford to let you have ’em, eh?”

“But they ain’t like that all the way down; look at that great hole—look how they’re tore!”

“They’re second-hand, of course. You didn’t think I was going to find you a suit that was bran new, did you?” asked Mr. Barney, reproachfully.

“But they’re too big.”

“Too big!—where?”

“Here,” I replied, extending my arms down the length of the trousers as Mr. Barney held them up; “and this way, too.”

“Not too full, as they wear them now. It’s fashionable to wear them full now: isn’t it, Ike?”

“I’d be sorry to wear a pair as tight as they are,” replied Mr. Ike; “I should expect to be laughed at if I did. If there’s anything to be said against ’em, it is that they may be a trifle too long for you; and that’s easily altered.”

“Try ’em on,” said Mr. Barney, taking up a pair of shears; “try ’em on, and all that hangs down below the leg, we’ll cut off; they’re sure to fit then.”

To try them on, it was necessary to take off my waistcoat and coat, as well as my trousers, owing to an economical arrangement of buttons and button-holes in the parochial attire. As I took them off, Mr. Ike secured them, and stowed them out of sight The fustian trousers certainly were full. They seemed to touch nowhere, except where they bore down; and the waistband came up so high under my arms, and lapped over so much, that the buttons were of no use at all.

“There, I told you so; a pair half the size ’ud be big enough.”

“Why! what’s the matter with ’em?”

“Look at the buttons! This one ought to be in the front—not under my arm.”

“You wouldn’t get a nigher fit unless you was measured. What odds about right buttons and wrong buttons! They ain’t dress trousers, don’t you know; they’re workin’ trousers.”

“They’re jolly uncomfor’ble.”

“Enough to make ’em, when you’ve got your shirt all bunched up round your waist,” exclaimed Mr. Ike, pausing in his occupation of lighting the fire. “Take it off, Barney; we’ll try and find him a thinner shirt, presently.”