James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

The same fat, blowsy woman whom I had rightly conjectured to be Mrs. Belcher was. there, and on the table was a spread of bread-and-cheese and onions. The lady’s reception of me was not cordial.

“Here, young what’s-yer-name?”

“Jim, ma’am.”

“There’s some supper for you, if it’s good enough. ’Taint the fat o’ the land, with apple-sarce, such as some people have been feedin’ you on, I’ll be bound; but it’s the best you’ll get here.”

“Thanky, ma’am; I’m werry fond of bread-and-cheese, ’specially with a ingun,” I replied, in as conciliatory a tone as I could assume.

“And of all other sorts of wittles, I’ll go bail. As if it wasn’t enuff to have one lazy hound eatin’ our ’eads off, but that that stuck up marm must”—

“There, that’ll do,” growled Mr. Belcher; “quite enough said. How should she know how we was sitiwated? If things was as they used to be, one boy, nor two boys, would have made any difference. P’r’aps you’d ha’ liked me to ha’ told her?”

“I’d be werry sorry,” responded Mrs. Belcher, with peculiar emphasis, “I’d sooner suffer starwation than she should know.”

“It seems so when you sets on cacklin’ at this ’ere rate afore he’s been in the house half-an-hour,” replied Mr. Belcher, sneeringly. “You get your supper, Jim. The missus is the least bit cross to-night. It’s arter her time for settin’ up, and she’s tired.”

Acting on this hint, I made as short work as possible of the liberal hunch of bread-and-cheese, and in about five minutes was able to announce that I was done.

“Then toddle to bed as soon as you like,” said Mr. Belcher. “Can you find your way back?”

“Back to where, sir?”

“Back to the kitchen. That’s where you’ve got to sleep; that’s where all my boys sleep. You’ll find it wery warm and snug. Sam’ll show yer how. Mind you have a bed to yourself, Jim; two in a bed ain’t ’ealthy. There’s sacks enough for all on yer. Good night. You’ve no ’casion to get up in the mornin’ till you’re called.”

“Has he got his workin’ clothes?” sleepily asked Mrs. Belcher, who by this time had composed herself for a dose in her great easy-chair.

“I was forgettin’ them. Here they are,” replied my master, giving me a black bundle from a corner. “The shirt you may as well keep on; likewise the boots; as for the rest, you’d better double ’em up careful, and bring ’em in here in the mornin’.”

Taking the bundle, I bade my master “Good night;” and found my way back to the “kitchen.” The fire was still burning, and the lantern suspended from a nail in one of the roof-beams, so that I was able to see pretty well about me; but I couldn’t see Sam. I could see Spider, curled up with his little mangy-looking, dirty-white dog, (recognising me again, he uttered but the smallest of growls;) but Sam was nowhere visible. This was perplexing, and I was still looking about, when a voice right at my elbow exclaimed, in a sleepy whisper—

“Last into bed puts the candle out, don’t yer know?”

It was Sam. He was in bed. He was lying atop of a heap of soot-sacks—lying in the top one, indeed—with a soot-sack doubled up under his head as a pillow, and his sooty cap pulled over his ears; so that, as I turned to see from whence the voice proceeded, all that was visible of Sam was his white teeth and his eyeballs.

It is astonishing how rapidly one acquires the weakness of fastidiousness. The night before last, whilst shivering in the open cart in Bedford Mews, had anyone said to me, “It is just six miles from here to Camberwell; but if you choose to trudge the distance, you will find there a snug shed with a jolly fire in it, and any number of sacks—sooty, but soft—to bed on, and all at your disposal,” I should have thanked my informant in the heartiest manner, and started off there and then, my only fear being that matters might not turn out to be so brilliant as was promised. But since the night before last I had enjoyed the luxury of a comfortable couch; and the result was, that the snug shed, and the jolly fire, and the heap of soft sacks all ready and at hand, so far from filling me with satisfaction, caused me a pang of something very like disgust.

“Which is my bed?” I inquired, in a melancholy voice, of Sam.

“You may have part of mine, if like to, which it’ll save you the trouble to make one,” replied Sam, generously. “All you’ve got to do is to fetch two sacks off that heap—one to get into, and one for a piller; on’y be quick, and don’t make a row so as to wake Spider, ’cos if you do, he’ll begin to cough, and the cough shakes the rheumatics into his legs, and then it’ll give you the mis’rables all night to hear him groanin’ and crunchin’ his teeth.”

It was departing somewhat from the letter of Mr. Belcher’s injunction to accept Sam’s proposal, but after all, since we slept in separate sacks, it was no worse than only sleeping two on a bedstead; so, gulping down my repugnance, I undressed by the light of the coke fire, and putting on the grimy trousers out of Mr. Belcher’s bundle, I prepared a pillow and a sack ready for slipping into, and then, blowing out the candle in the lantern, next minute was bedded on the black bags, snug and warm, at any rate, and not particularly uncomfortable, only for the overpowering odour of soot. It was an odour, however, with a soothing effect, and, combined with the fumes of the burning coke, sent me to sleep in a very little while.

It was not yet daylight when, awoke by the barking of Spider’s little dog, I found that Sam was getting up to go to work, having been roused by Ned Perks, who, in spite of poor Spider’s complainings and entreaty about the wind and its disastrous effects on his joints, persisted in standing with the shed door wide open, giving directions to Sam.

“It’ll be the death on me, I’m sure it will,” whined Spider, sitting up to cover up his tortured legs with more sacks. “I wish it would. I wish it would come all of a bust, and be the death on me.”

“And a—good job too, for all the good of sich hawful!” (offal, I think he meant,) growled Ned Perks. “It’s ’bout time you was sent to the knacker’s, you precious snivillin’ bag-o’-bones! You might be worth a flimsy then, and that’s mor’n you are now.”

So saying, the brute went away, taking Sam with him, and banging the door.

Bearing in mind Mr. Belcher’s intimation that I need not get up until I was called, I lay still, and presently I heard Spider stirring.

“ You’re like the rest on ’em,” said he, presently, and in an impatient tone; “here you lay, just as though it was the middle of the night, instead of five o’clock in the mornin.’ Your jints is all right, ain’t they? hang you! What do you care whose jints ain’t, and who warnts a fire and who don’t?”

I thought to be sure that Spider was addressing himself to me, and was about to tell him that if he wanted me to get up and light the fire he might at least have asked me in a civil manner. Before I could speak, however, he began again.

“Don’t get a-lickin’ me. I don’t want none of your lickin’. It’s easier to lay here a-lickin’ than to go and do what’s wanted of yer, ain’t it? You won’t get up, eh? P’r’aps that’ll make you, you lazy beggar! Ah! I thought it would.”

It was plain that Spider was talking to the little dirty-white dog previously alluded to as occupying part of his couch, for simultaneous with the sound of a smart thump a sudden whine was heard, and then a scampering, and a scratching at the kitchen door.

“That’s havin’ the use of your jints!” groaned Spider, in allusion, as I suppose, to the activity displayed by his canine friend. “I wish I was ekal to it. I wouldn’t lay here wishin’ myself dead, and everybody wishin’ the same.” And then, as I could hear, he shuffled off his sacks, and crept tediously and with many pauses after the dog.