George Henty - Sturdy and Strong - or, How George Andrews Made His Way

In a short time he noticed a lad of about his own age watching him greedily.

He was far from being a respectable-looking boy. His clothes were ragged, and his toes could be seen through a hole in his boot. He wore neither hat nor cap, and his hair looked as if it had not been combed since the day of his birth. There was a sharp, pinched look on his face. But had he been washed and combed and decently clad he would not have been a bad-looking boy. At any rate George liked his face better than most he had seen in the market, and he longed for a talk with someone. So he held out his other slice of pudding, and said:

"Have a bit?"

"Oh, yes!" the boy replied "Walker, eh?"

"No, I mean it, really. Will you have a bit?"

"No larks?" asked the boy.

"No; no larks. Here you are."

Feeling assured now that no trick was intended the boy approached, took without a word the pudding which George held out, and, seating himself on a basket close to him, took a great bite.

"Where do you live?" George asked, when the slice of pudding had half disappeared.

"Anywheres," the boy replied, waving his hand round.

"I mean, where do you sleep?"

The boy nodded, to intimate that his sleeping-place was included in the general description of his domicile.

"And no one interferes with you?" George inquired.

"The beaks, they moves you on when they ketches you; but ef yer get under a cart or in among the baskets you generally dodges 'em."

"And suppose you want to pay for a place to sleep, where do you go and how much do you pay?"

"Tuppence," the boy said; "or if yer want a first-rate, fourpence. Does yer want to find a crib?" he asked doubtfully, examining his companion.

"Well, yes," George said. "I want to find some quiet place where I can sleep, cheap, you know."

"Out of work?" the boy inquired.

"Yes. I haven't got anything to do at present. I am looking for a place, you know."

"Don't know no one about?"

"No; I have just come in from Croydon."

The boy shook his head.

"Don't know nothing as would suit," he said. "Why, yer'd get them clothes and any money yet had walked off with the wery fust night."

"I should not get a room to myself, I suppose, even for fourpence?" George asked, making a rapid calculation that this would come to two and fourpence per week, as much as his mother had paid for a comparatively comfortable room in Croydon.

The boy opened his eyes in astonishment at his companion requiring a room for himself.

"Lor' bless yer, yer'd have a score of them with yer!"

"I don't care about a bed," George said. "Just some place to sleep in. Just some straw in any quiet corner."

This seemed more reasonable to the boy, and he thought the matter over.

"Well," he said at last, "I knows of a place where they puts up the hosses of the market carts. I knows a hostler there. Sometimes when it's wery cold he lets me sleep up in the loft. Aint it warm and comfortable just! I helps him with the hosses sometimes, and that's why. I will ax him if yer likes."

George assented at once. His ideas as to the possibility of sleeping in the open air had vanished when he saw the surroundings, and a bed in a quiet loft seemed to him vastly better than sleeping in a room with twenty others.

"How do you live?" he asked the lad, "and what's your name?"

"They calls me the Shadder," the boy said rather proudly; "but my real name's Bill."

"Why do they call you the Shadow?" George asked.

"'Cause the bobbies finds it so hard to lay hands on me," Bill replied.

"But what do they want to lay hands on you for?" George asked.

"Why, for bagging things, in course," Bill replied calmly.

"Bagging things? Do you mean stealing?" George said, greatly shocked.

"Well, not regular prigging," the Shadow replied; "not wipes, yer know, nor tickers, nor them kind of things. I aint never prigged nothing of that kind."

"Well, what is it then you do – prig?" George asked, mystified.

"Apples or cabbages, or a bunch of radishes, onions sometimes, or 'taters. That aint regular prigging, you know."

"Well, it seems to me the same sort of thing," George said, after a pause.

"I tell yer it aint the same sort of thing at all," the Shadow said angrily. "Everyone as aint a fool knows that taters aint wipes, and no one can't say as a apple and a ticker are the same."

"No, not the same," George agreed; "but you see one is just as much stealing as the other."

"No, it aint," the boy reasserted. "One is the same as money and t'other aint. I am hungry and I nips a apple off a stall. No one aint the worse for it. You don't suppose as they misses a apple here? Why, there's wagon-loads of 'em, and lots of 'em is rotten. Well, it aint no more if I takes one than if it was rotten. Is it now?"

George thought there was a difference, but he did not feel equal to explaining it.

"The policemen must think differently," he said at last, "else they wouldn't be always trying to catch you."

"Who cares for the bobbies?" Bill said contemptuously. "I don't; and I don't want no more jaw with you about it. If yer don't likes it, yer leaves it. I didn't ask for yer company, did I? So now then."

George had really taken a fancy to the boy, and moreover he saw that in the event of a quarrel his chance of finding a refuge for the night was small. In his sense of utter loneliness in the great city he was loath to break with the only acquaintance he had made.

"I didn't mean to offend you, Bill," he said; "only I was sorry to hear you say you took things. It seems to me you might get into trouble; and it would be better after all to work for a living."

"What sort of work?" Bill said derisively. "Who's agoing to give me work? Does yer think I have only got to walk into a shop and ask for 'ployment? They wouldn't want to know nothing about my character, I suppose? nor where I had worked before? nor where my feyther lived? nor nothing? Oh, no, of course not! It's blooming easy to get work about here; only got to ax for it, that's all. Good wages and all found, that's your kind."

"I don't suppose it's easy," George said; "but it seems to me people could get something to do if they tried."

"Tried!" the boy said bitterly. "Do yer think we don't try! Why, we are always trying to earn a copper or two. Why, we begins at three o'clock in the morning when the market-carts come in, and we goes on till they comes out of that there theater at night, just trying to pick up a copper. Sometimes one does and sometimes one doesn't. It's a good day, I tell you, when we have made a tanner by the end of it. Don't tell me! And now as to this ere stable; yer means it?"

"Yes," George said; "certainly I mean it."

"Wery well then, you be here at this corner at nine o'clock. I will go before that and square it with Ned. That's the chap I was speaking of."

"I had better give you something to give him," George said. "Will a shilling do?"

"Yes, a bob will do for three or four nights. Are you going to trust me with it?"

"Of course I am," George replied. "I am sure you wouldn't be so mean as to do me out of it; besides, you told me that you never stole money and those sort of things."

"It aint everyone as would trust me with a bob for all that," Bill replied; "and yer are running a risk, yer know, and I tells yer if yer goes on with that sort of game yer'll get took in rarely afore yer've done. Well, hand it over. I aint a-going to bilk yer."

The Shadow spoke carelessly, but this proof of confidence on the part of his companion really touched him, and as he went off he said to himself, "He aint a bad sort, that chap, though he is so precious green. I must look arter him a bit and see he don't get into no mischief."

George, on his part, as he walked away down into the Strand again, felt that he had certainly run a risk in thus intrusting a tenth of his capital to his new acquaintance; but the boy's face and manner had attracted him, and he felt that, although the Shadow's notions of right and wrong might be of a confused nature, he meant to act straight toward him.