James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“Halloa, old chap! so you’ve come to life again!” exclaimed she, cordially, as she waddled over from the fireplace, and shook hands with me as though I had fainted off so long a way, that I wasn’t expected to return just at present. “Why, cheer up, old chap! What d’yer mean by goin’ on like this?”

By “goin’ on like this,” she meant, what did I want to cry for? But that was her fault; she shouldn’t have kissed me. She didn’t kiss me on the mouth, but on the forehead; and whether it was that the sensation of being kissed was so foreign to me, (I had never been kissed since that night when my mother died, and my father and I lay in young Joe Jenkins’s bedroom,) or that I was in that weak condition as to be unequal to sensations of any kind, is more than I can say. I only know that there ensued immediately on receipt of the motherly old woman’s kiss a tingling of my blood as when I had fainted just before, only that it was a hot tingling instead of a cold one—a tingling with life instead of death in it, and resulting, as before stated, in a wholesome fit of tears.

Judiciously leaving me to lay my face on the pillow and have my cry out, Mrs. Winkship, assisted by Martha, bustled about to get supper ready; and in a few minutes there arose from the bright little Dutch oven suspended before the bars of the grate a fragrance that went very far towards consoling me and reconciling me to the novel situation in which I found myself.

“Are you ready, Jim?”

“Quite, thanky, mum!”

“I had a little chicken biled for dinner, my dear,” said Mrs. Winkship, evidently delighting in treating me as a “patient,” and lifting me in her mighty arms from the sofa to a chair between the fire and the supper table; “and I’ve just hashed up what was left in the broth for you. You eat that—every bit of it, mind!—and then by that time the chops will be done to a turn.”

I needed no further pressing. The hashed chicken was very nice, I dare say; but it wasn’t the sort of thing to peg away at. It was a downright shame to treat a delicacy so rudely; but for that my wolfish hunger, rather than my proper self, was responsible. I regarded the savoury mess—there was a considerable quantity of it—rather as an enemy than a friend—an enemy that barred the way to a real and substantial enjoyment, and whom it was desirable to exterminate as speedily as possible. It took me so short a time to dispose of the hash that I almost believe that Mrs. Winkship held her breath in amazement throughout the entire process. I think it must have been so, or she would never have been able to produce the tremendous sigh that accompanied her emphatic exclamation—

“Well! that ever I should have lived to see the like of that! It was like a drink of water to him.”

That was exactly what I felt it to be like, but I didn’t like to tell her so; indeed, when she asked me if I could eat any mutton-chop, I sacrificed my feelings for hers to the extent of replying, “Just a little bit, ma’am,” all the while yearning for every chop in the Dutch oven, and a jolly thick round of bread to sop the fat up with. My eyes, however, were more ravenous than my stomach, (which was scarcely to be wondered at, considering the brief opportunity at present allowed the former for feasting,) and after consuming one chop—the biggest—and a few fried potatoes, I felt myself fully satisfied.

“And now,” said Mrs. Winkship, when Martha had cleared away the supper-things, and the sofa was wheeled round to the fire, and we all three were seated comfortably on it, and a stiff jorum of hot rum and water, for the good old woman’s comfort, was conveniently placed on the corner of the mantelpiece—“now, then, Jimmy, tell us all about it.”

And I did. I faithfully related to her every one of the most important events that had happened to me since that morning when I ran away from Mrs. Burke, after inflicting that savage bite on her thumb (I was wicked enough not to be very sorry when I was informed that she was compelled to wear it in a sling for more than a week afterwards.) I told her all about my partners, Mouldy and Ripston; how I fell in with them; how they had offered me a share of their sleeping-place; how I had joined with them in their market pilferings. I don’t think I should have ventured to have told her about this could I have foreseen the effect of the revelation. Once more the old lady broke out against Mrs. Burke, wishing that she had her there at that moment, and hoping that she might taste of the gaol she had so nearly driven me into.

“But they don’t send people to quod for nailing things in the market, ma’am,” I explained; “it’s the beadle that settles them sort of cases; that’s what he’s there for. Mouldy told me so.”

“Mouldy was a lying villain, then,” responded Mrs. Winkship, “as you would, sure as eggs, have found one day, Jimmy. It was a mercy that fever fell on you, Jimmy, since it put a stop to your thievings. It did put a stop to ’em—eh, my boy?”

“Oh, yes, ’m! it quite put a stop to ’em,” I replied; and as at this point of interruption I had got no further into my story than that part where I was carried to the workhouse, I resolved to say nothing about the pineapple. I have thought since that it was odd she should make such a fuss about my dishonest market practices, while she seemed to treat my misappropriation of the work-house suit almost as a joke—as something to laugh at till her fat sides shook, at all events. She didn’t laugh, however, when I got a little further into the story, and told her how the two young Jews had served me. She grew as furious concerning them as she did at Mrs. Burke’s behaviour; and when I got to that part where the young “clo’” dealers so cleverly contrived to swindle me out of my shilling, she had not the patience to sit on the sofa and listen, but stood up, with flashing eyes, and her hands on her hips, in a tremendous rage. “Devil take ’em for a pair of beauties, I say!” exclaimed she. “Rot ’em! the shabby curs,” (here she stamped her foot;) “if I was a man instead of a woman, I’d spend a week in laying wait, but I’d catch ’em. If I knew a man I could trust with the job, I’d give him a pound, poor as I am, to find ’em and give ’em a twistin’.”

“The Lord be thanked it’s no worse!” exclaimed she, piously, as I finished my narrative. “It’s bad enough for Polly Barnard’s boy to turn up as a beggar—more disgrace and shame to the man who killed her and took in her place an Irish riff-raff not fit to clean her shoes—but it might have been worse.”

“How do you mean—a beggar, ma’am? I didn’t turn up beggin’. When Martha found me, I was singin’. You don’t call that beggin’, do you?”

“Cadgin’, then; it’s about the same, I reckon,” replied Mrs. Winkship. “If one ain’t as bad as the other, there ain’t much difference that I see.”

I may here remark, that amongst people of my born grade no one is so contemptuously regarded as he who is known as a “cadger.” The meaning they set on the word is not the dictionary meaning. The “cadger” with them is the whining beggar—the cowardly impostor, who, being driven, or finding it convenient to. subsist on charity, goes about his business with an affectation of profoundest humility, and a consciousness of his own unworthiness; a sneaking, abject wretch, aiming to crop a meal out of the despising and disgust he excites in his fellow-creatures. The ordinary beggar—the fellow who knocks at your door and says, “Will you kindly spare a copper to a poor fellow hard-up?”—is regarded as quite a superior person compared with the “cadger.” My opinion of the cadger naturally was the popular one; and when Mrs. Winkship stigmatised street-singing as cadging, I felt so ashamed that I could not look her in the face.