James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“I’d make it different this minnit, Rip, if I only had the chance; you couldn’t put a feller up to the chance, could you, Rip?”

“How could I?” asked Ripston, eagerly.

“Well, course I didn’t know,” I replied, still whispering; “but I was a thinkin’ that p’r’aps your guv’ner”—

“That’s jest ezactly what I was a thinkin’ on,” interrupted Ripston, emphatically; “and since you was a thinkin’ on it too, why I’m blowed if we don’t try it at all events. Come on; don’t let us stay here any longer, else the guv’ner ’ll be out of temper ’cos I’m so late; you can tell us all about it goin’ along.”

And fully resolved to dare all consequences and adopt Ripston’s suggestion, I hurried with him along the now nearly deserted lobby towards the street.

Barely, however, had we reached the pavement, when an obstacle of an unexpected nature presented itself. The said obstacle took the shape of Mr. George Hopkins. He was very deliberately leaning against a neighbouring lamp-post, half hidden in the shadow of it, smoking a cigar, and, as soon as we emerged from the gaff, he came up and laid what may have appeared to an observer a kind hand on my jacket collar. I was, however, conscious that it was a tight hold, and one that I should have experienced considerable difficulty in escaping from, had I found the courage to try.

“So, here you are!” he exclaimed, in tones of mild reproach. “You unkind, disobedient boy you, how can you visit such low places when you know that your dear aunt is so averse to it? Will you never grow tired of such low-lived acquaintance? As for you, you young scamp,” (this to Ripston,) “if I ever catch you leading this lad astray again I’ll put you into the hands of the police. Be off with you.”

I was taken so suddenly and completely by surprise that for a few moments I could not say a word, while Ripston, altogether taken in by long George Hopkins’s gentlemanly exterior and authoritative language, could only stare at us with wide open eyes and his mouth ajar. At last, however, he mustered courage to say,

“Oh, well, if you ain’t a comin’ my way, Smiff, I’ll bid you good night.”

“Good night, Rip, p’raps I shall see you again soon.”

And away he went at a trot towards Spitalfields, looking back again and again as though not at all knowing what to make of it.

“Who’s that whelp I caught you with?” demanded long George, as still with his hand on my jacket collar he turned me about and we walked in the direction of Keate Street.

“He ain’t a whelp, he’s an honest boy,” I replied, sulkily.

“Then he’d better keep away from a confounded young thief like you are, that’s my advice to him,” observed long George, with that peculiar laugh of his. “What the d——l have you got to

do with honest boys? You mind your own business, which is my business, that’s quite enough for you to do.”

I felt too full of shame and confusion to make him any reply; he had taken his long fingers from my jacket and left me free to walk by his side; there was nothing to hinder my slipping away and running back after Ripston, and I believe that if I had a distinct and leading thought in my bewildered mind it was to do this; but, somehow or other, I durst not: there was something about Mr. Hopkins’s way of speaking and looking that rendered me powerless, and with this lame and insufficient reason the reader must be content, for I can give him no other. Presently he spoke again:

“What was you talking to that honest boy about up in the corner—just before you came out of the gaff?”

“’Bout old times,” I answered shortly.

“Old times, hey! Times when you was an honest boy?”

“No; times when he wasn’t.”

“Oh. He wasn’t always an honest boy, eh, Jim? What was his line?”

I was conscious at the time that it was acting mean towards my old friend, Rip, to answer such questions respecting his past career; but, as before observed, I had no such thing as a will of my own with the thief-trainer.

“He used to pick up a livin’ at Common Garden,” I replied; “so used I; we used to lodge together under the ’Delphi.”

“Ah. Where’s he lodging now? What’s he up to? How does he get a livin’, Jim?”

“Works for it.”

“I should say he did; hard, too, poor, dirty, little wretch,” observed Mr. Hopkins, with his ugly laugh; “what does he earn, Jim?”

“Eighteenpence a-week and his grub.”

Mr. Hopkins laughed outright.

“Your friend must have drove a lively trade in Covent Garden to turn it up for eighteenpence a-week, Jim! What does he work at?”

“Carries out coals and taters and that.”

“Carries out coals—makes a horse of himself; goes about dirtier than a costermonger from Monday morning till Saturday night for eighteenpence! Do you know how much that is in a whole year, Jim?—all through the winter and all through the summer?”

“It comes to a good bit, don’t it?”

“It comes to three pounds eighteen shillings.” “Well, that’s a good bit.”

“What! for a year’s work? Do you know how much there was in that book you made this evening?”

“I didn’t have time to count it afore you”—

“Just so. Well, there were seven-and-twenty pounds in that book, Jim. As much as he’d earn in seven years. I wonder what he’d ha’ thought, Jim, if you had told him that, without making your hands dirty, you could earn as much in two minutes as he could earn in seven years hulking about at a dirty coal shop! It would have been a shame to tell him; it would have made him so precious miserable, wouldn’t it?”

“Perhaps he’d ha’ said, if I had told him about it, that he’d rather have the eighteenpence safe than”—

“Than what, Jim?” observed long George, encouragingly, seeing that I hesitated.

“Than—than run any risk,” I mustered courage to remark.

“I daresay that’s the answer he would have made,” returned Mr. Hopkins, “being a canting little sneak that’s turned ‘good; ’ I think you’ve just hit it when you make that guess at his answer. Fox and the grapes, eh, Jim?”

“What grapes, sir?”

“The grapes that the fox said were sour and not fit to eat, because, after six hours’ sweating and jumping, he found that he couldn’t get at ’em,” replied long George, affably. “As I remarked before, Jim, all boys are conceited; and it ain’t for me to say anything to make you think more of yourself than you do at present; but, of course, you must understand, that it isn’t every muff that could have done even the little that you’ve done; it wants spirit, pluck—talent, in fact, and that’s what you’ve got in you, and what that poor coal-shop donkey hasn’t. Oh yes, he’d preach, I’ll be bound, if you was fool enough to listen to him. He has been preaching, or I’m very much mistaken.”

“Pr’aps you might call it preaching, sir,” I answered; “he told me about his changin’ and that.”

“And about how much better he felt, eh?”

“Yes.”

“And how sorry he’d be to return to his old ways?”

“He said that, too, I recollecks.”

“Of course he did. I know all about it, you see; and what did you say?”

“Say about what?”

“About me?”

“Nothing at all.”

“What?”

We had got into a quiet and secluded quarter of the town by this time, and as Mr. Hopkins uttered this last ejaculation, he suddenly stopped and wheeled round on me, as though my audacity in denying that I had been talking about him, exceeded anything he had ever heard in all his life. You would have thought, from his tone and manner, that he had been in the box with us all the evening—lurking under the seats probably—and that we had been talking about him, and he had heard every word. Had I been talking about him—had I mentioned his name even—I should have been brought to immediate confusion and confession, I am sure; but as the reader is aware, I was innocent.