James Greenwood: The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

“I never said a single word about you,” I answered him, meeting his searching look without fear. He was convinced, but it suited him better to make still a little more profit out of the capital he had so adroitly invested; or rather, by cunningly doubling on my words, to get back capital, profit, and all

“You never said a word about me! By——, that’s the richest thing I’ve heard for a month! Ha! ha! I should rather suppose you did not. To a strange boy, too—a boy you happen to meet at a gaff! Well, well! we shall understand each other better by and by, I’ll be bound.”

And he went along musing pleasantly on my preposterous answer, as could be told by his frequent under-breath explosions of mirth. I have my doubts that to the astute even-minded reader all this, as set down, appears absurd, and as showing what a very slow and stupid boy I must have been; but I must remind him that in recording this last conversation between myself and Mr. Hopkins, I have not done him justice! I am not equal to the task. He was too much for me then, and he is too much for me now. There was something about him altogether incomprehensible, and not to be weighed by mundane weights and scaled. “Something about him” exactly expresses my meaning. About him, but one couldn’t say where particularly; everywhere; something under his perfect control, and ready at hand to season and flavour his every move and utterance! something—

But, there, I shall make my meaning no clearer by weaving fog at this rate, so I will say no more about it.

“What I was going to say,” continued Mr. Hopkins presently, “about the young prig turned Methodist we were speaking of, is this. He’s a cur; that’s the long and the short of it. I don’t mean to say he can help it; who can? But he is a cur; he tried his hand at a gentleman’s life—no work and plenty of money; and, finding it no go, he sneaks back to carrying coals at threepence a day. Best place for him. But s’pose he hadn’t been born a cur? S’pose he’d been born a boy with talent in him, such as you have! How then? Why, he’d have seen all the coal-shops at Jericho before he’d have consented to throw himself away on them; don’t it stand to sense that he would?”

“Well, so it does, sir, when you come to look at it in that there kind ’er way.”

“What other way can you look at it? It’s the only fair way. What good does that boy get by working like a nigger for eighteenpence a-week? Who thanks him? Who thinks of him at all? Nobody says to him, ‘What a first-rate sort of chap you are to turn honest and work for threepence a day.’ What they say is—‘Think yourself jolly lucky we let you come amongst us at all, and mind you toe the mark to half-a-farthing, because we all know about you, and have got our eye on you; and the least slip you make we’re down on you, and off you go to quod as an ungrateful scoundrel.’ Why, no boy of pluck could buckle under to such a way of living! and, what’s more, he’d be a jolly fool if he tried—that’s my opinion. Here we are at home.”

So saying, Mr. Hopkins opened the street-door of the house in Keate Street with a latch-key; and, going into the parlour, there he found a hot and delicious beefsteak pudding, with a dish of mealy potatoes, and two bright glasses and a jug of beer, all ready and waiting for us.

“Draw up, Jim,” observed Mr. Hopkins, helping me to a great plateful of the pudding, with several spoonfuls of the rich brown gravy over my potatoes; “don’t spare it; there’s plenty more where this comes from. Help yourself to beer.”

Such a magnificent repast ensuing so immediately on long George’s ingenious arguments was altogether too much for my newly-sprouted resolution to “change,” as Ripston had done. As Mr. Hopkins remarked, it was all very well for a boy like poor Rip, who had no talent, (I didn’t quite know the meaning of the word, but I liked it very much,) for anything better than nailing carrots and gooseberries, to turn coal-boy at threepence a day and his victuals, and very kind in him to advise me to do something of the same kind. Of course, he didn’t know anything about my having pluck, and spirit, and talent, how should he? I had never told him how that I had been working for two months on my own hands as a regular pickpocket, and how easy it was, and how that any day you might stumble on a bit of luck—such as was contained in that pocket-book—that would admit of your living like a gentleman for months together, and wearing fine clothes, and going to as many plays and gaffs as ever you liked, or he might have altered his tune. After all, where was the use of making a dirty drudge of yourself, such as Rip was, just for the sake of being able to say that you are honest—commonly honest, like everybody else is, and nobody saying thanky?

“Have a bit more steak, Jim?”

“Just a little bit more, sir.”

“I say! I wonder what that dirty young beggar of a coal-boy has got for his supper, Jim?

A lump of dry bread and a bit of mouldy cheese, or something in that line, I’ll wager. Ha! ha! I fancy I see the poor devil sitting on a potatoe-bin in the dingy shop, eating his supper! eh, Jim?”

“Ha! ha! I fancy I sees him!” I replied, like the selfish little traitor that I was.

“When he’s finished his supper he’ll make himself up a bed under the counter with coal-sacks, and go to sleep along with the rats, like a good boy; eh, Jim?”

“That’ll be about it, I reckon,” I replied again, laughing as Mr. Hopkins laughed.

“You’ll find your bedroom pretty comfortable,” continued Mr. Hopkins, after a pause. “You’ll find some shirts and that sort of thing in a chest of drawers there. There’s a suit or so of clothes, too, just about your size, I should think; if they ain’t, I must get you measured; I shouldn’t like to see you go in and out of my house in that shabby rig. Did you ever have a watch, Jim?”

I have a watch! Why didn’t he ask me if ever I had a saddle-horse, or rode in a carriage with my own flunkies behind?

“No, sir, I never had a watch; I often thought I should like to have one, though.”

“Of course, you shall have one; my boys always carry a watch; there’s one up-stairs, I think, that will be just the ticket for you. I’ll go and fetch it.”

And up-stairs he went, and presently came down again with a beautiful silver watch, with a gold face, in his hand, and a long silver chain attached to it.

“I’ll set it right by mine, and then you won’t have to do anything else but wind it up when it wants it. You know how to wind up a watch, I suppose, Jim?”

Of course I did not, and I told him so; so in the kindest way he showed me how, and gave me the key, and, throwing the chain over my head, told me to put my watch in my pocket, which I did: the feel of it there, and the sight of the magnificent silver chain drooping from my waistcoat pocket, so widened the gulf between me and poor old Rip the threepenny coal-boy, that I could not think of him without a feeling of pity.

After supper, Mr. Hopkins took a glass of grog and a cigar, reclining at his ease on the sofa, and leaving me sitting by the fire, feeling very, much more at my ease than I should have thought possible an hour ago.

“What did you see at the gaff, Jim? Anything very cutting?” he inquired.

“It was rather that way, sir,” I answered.

He laughed a sneering bit of a laugh. “Tell us about it, Jim,” said he.

Very readily I began. My description of the first step he allowed to pass with no further commentary than was expressed in a grunt of disgust

The particulars of the second step he listened to with more attention, and when I told him all about it, said he: