James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“Oh, yes! you’re in a great hurry, ain’t yer? It’s all werry well a-boundin’ to the door and makin’ a show of bein’ willin’, you wagabone! but how can I trust yer? How did yer serve me yesterday, you willin? Didn’t yer go a-hookin’ it off and leavin’ me without a fire till nine o’clock a’most? How do I know but as how you’re arter servin’ me out agin just in the same way? Don’t lick me, I tell yer. I shan’t b’lieve yer a bit the more for them sneakin’ ways. If you warnt to make friends, there’s other ways of doin’ it, ’sides being a sneak. Here, smell o’ this. Now go, and be quick back agin; if you don’t, I’ll just about smash yer. I’m always promisin’ to smash yer, but if you don’t mind yerself this morning, I’ll do it, I will, swelp me goodness! Now be off.”

Hearing the cripple talk in this strange way, I peeped cautiously over the edge of the heap of sacks on which I was lying to get a peep at him; but the place was so dark, and he was so black, that all I could make out was his dim figure crawling all fours towards the door, and the little white dog dancing and whining about him, and running to and fro between his master and the door, expressing, as plainly as a dog could, his anxiety to be off. When Spider said, “Smell o’ this,” he held something out to the dog, though what it was, although! tried very hard, I could not possibly discern. He had dragged a sack along with him to the door; and when he had pushed it a little way open to let the dog out, and swiftly pulled it to again, he rolled himself in the sack, and squatted on one side to wait.

He waited, and waited, uttering no other sounds but those expressive of his rheumatic pains, for fully a quarter of an hour, and until the daylight began to show through the dingy skylight in the roof of the shed. Then he began to grow fidgety and grumble under his breath, and once or twice he opened the door just a little way, and peeped out.

“I wish I was behind him, cuss him!” exclaimed he presently, in a whining whisper; “I’d make him move hisself a little quicker. He’s larkin’—that’s what he’s doin.’ What does he care? His jints is all right. He’s met with some other dawg, bust him! that’s wot it is; and he’s foolin’ away his time while I’m layin’ here freezin’ to my marrer a’most. Cuss him! I wish I was behind him. All right! stop till he does come home. I’ll give him one of my three slices for his brekfus, won’t I? Oh yes! I’ll give him the lot, bust him! I’ll—Here he comes, at last!”

As Spider spoke, first a swift pattering of canine feet, and then a scratching at the door was heard; and on Spider pushing open the door a little, in ran the little dirty-white cur, bearing in his mouth a clean shank of mutton bone. Such I saw it was instantly; not so poor Spider, whose vision was defective. The dog bolted past him, and made for the other end of the shed.

“Come here! D’ ye hear? Ain’t yer had foolin’ enough? cuss yer!—bein’ gone all this while after a single stick. It’s a good thick un, I think, though, and new: dropped out of somebody’s bundle, I dessay. Here, Pinch! Pinch! good dawg! bring it here, Pinch.”

But Pinch didn’t seem inclined to obey. He had retreated into a comer, and there he lay with his treasure. Poor Spider was furious. Finding that Pinch wouldn’t come, he set out at a good all-fours’ pace to rout him out and inflict summary vengeance on him; but before he had made three yards, control of his faithless “jints” failed him, and he slipped with one side of his face to the floor. Then, moved by rage and pain, he fell to abusing Pinch in terms so terrible, that had he been anything better than the conscienceless vagabond his master made him out to be, he would have been consumed with remorse. But the dog’s timidity increased in proportion with the cripple’s fury, and he wouldn’t stir a peg. Strengthened by his passion, Spider got on all-fours again, and reaching the comer where the dog was hiding, made a fierce grab at it, (which the animal was lucky enough to avoid,) and the next instant, had Spider been canine himself, and rabid, he couldn’t have made a madder noise.

“Hang you! cuss you! bust you!” he roared, catching up three different articles—to wit, a boot, an old earthenware jug, and a lump of coke—and hurling them along with each anathema at the retreating cur. “It ain’t wood at all; it’s a bone. You’ll bring bones home when I sends you arter wood, will yer? Jest let me lay a fist on yer!” And he began to shuffle and wriggle along after the unlucky tyke with all his might.

There was such a noise that it was useless for me to pretend to be asleep any longer; so I sat up and inquired of Spider what the row was about.

I’ll show him when I ketch hold on him replied he, still making after the dog, with the bone of contention in his hand. “I’ll kill him with it. I’ve often threatened to smash him, and now I’ll do for him. Hold him, that’s a good feller!”

“What’s he been doin’?” I asked, as the delinquent bolted past me, and I made a pretence at stopping him.

“I’ll tell you what he’s been doin’,” gasped Spider, quite out of breath with his tremendous exertion of the last five minutes. “He’s been making a fool of me. He knows werry well that I can’t make a fire until he has gone and got me sticks enough. Werry well he knows that—cos it’s his job every mornin’, so there’s no ’scuse for the beggar—and what does he do? Why, yesterday, he goes and gets about three bits, and all on it as wet as muck; and then he steps it off, and comes back when he likes. Well, I looks over that, and I send him agin this mornin’, lettin’ him smell a good wholesome bit of wood ’cos there shouldn’t be any mistake; and agin, what does he do? Why, instead of thinkin’ on what he’s sent arter, and doin’ what he’s told to, he goes on his own hook, a-huntin’ arter bones to pick; and he’s got the cheek to bring ’em home, and ’spects he’s goin’ to pick ’em while I’m a-sittin’ without a bit of fire till Sam comes home—which p’r’aps it’ll be ten or eleven o’clock—and me all of a ager, and not a still jint in me.”

Here the poor fellow’s rage became subdued in grief, and he began to cry and rub his eyes on his sooty cuffs.

“Cheer up, matey! We’ll soon have a fire,” said I, quite touched at sight of the poor helpless wretch’s emotion. “I ’ll help yer.”

“How can yer? How can yer help me till that greedy ’umbug goes out and picks up some wood?”

“How? Why, I ’ll go and ask Mr. Belcher for some. He’ll let us have some, won’t he?”

“It ain’t him; it’s her. She’s the one that won’t let you have it,” replied Spider, sinking his voice to a whisper. “Bless yer! if she know’d that I lit a fire more than a quarter of an hour afore brekfustime—which is ten, when the boys comes in from their mornin’ sweepin’ (leastways, that was the laws when we had boys to come in, and it’s the same now there’s on’y young Sam)—she’d think no more of crackin’ me over the head with the copper-stick or the fust thing that come handy, than she would of drinkin’ a glass of gin. That’s why I’m ’bliged to be so artful about gettin’ in my wood, don’t yer see?”

Now, it happened that before I came away from Mrs. Winkship, the night before, she had slipped a sixpence into my hand.

“You tell me where there’s a shop open, and we’ll jolly soon have a fire,” said I. “I’ve got a a’penny.”

“What! do yer mean to say you’re good to stand a a’penny bundle?” said Spider, so near a prospect of a fire lighting his dull eyes with joy. “Oh! I ’ll tell yer where, sharp enough: it’s a chandler’s shop just round to the right, outside the gate. I say”—