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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Child of the Jago, by Arthur Morrison
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Child of the Jago
+
+Author: Arthur Morrison
+
+Release Date: August 3, 2011 [EBook #36958]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHILD OF THE JAGO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
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+
+
+
+                                   A CHILD OF THE JAGO
+
+                                   BY ARTHUR MORRISON
+
+                            AUTHOR OF 'TALES OF MEAN STREETS'
+
+
+    THIRD EDITION
+
+    METHUEN & CO.
+    36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
+    LONDON
+    1897
+
+
+                   TO
+           ARTHUR OSBORNE JAY
+    VICAR OF HOLY TRINITY, SHOREDITCH
+
+
+
+    _... Woe unto the foolish prophets, that
+     follow their own spirit, and have seen
+     nothing!..._
+
+    _Because, even because they have seduced
+     my people, saying, Peace; and there
+     was no peace; and one built up a
+     wall, and lo, others daubed it with
+     untempered mortar:_
+
+    _Say unto them which daub it with untempered
+     mortar, that it shall fall:
+     there shall be an overflowing shower;
+     and ye, O great hailstones, shall fall;
+     and a stormy wind shall rend it._
+
+    _Lo, when the wall is fallen, shall it not
+     be said unto you, Where is the daubing
+     wherewith ye have daubed it?--_
+
+
+        EZEKIEL xiii. 3 ... 10 12.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
+
+
+I am glad to take this, the first available opportunity, to acknowledge
+the kindness with which _A Child of the Jago_ has been received: both by
+the reading public, from which I have received many gratifying
+assurances that what I have tried to say has not altogether failed of
+its effect: and by the reviewers, the most of whom have written in very
+indulgent terms.
+
+I think indeed, that I am the more gratified by the fact that this
+reception has not been unanimous: because an outcry and an opposition,
+even from an unimportant minority, are proofs that I have succeeded in
+saying, however imperfectly, something that was worth being said. Under
+the conditions of life as we know it there is no truth worth telling
+that will not interfere with some hearer's comfort. Various objections
+have been made to _A Child of the Jago_, and many of them had already
+been made to _Tales of Mean Streets_. And it has been the way of the
+objectors as well as the way of many among the kindest of my critics, to
+call me a 'realist.' The word has been used sometimes, it would seem, in
+praise; sometimes in mere indifference as one uses a phrase of
+convenient description; sometimes by way of an irremediable reproach. It
+is natural, then, not merely that I should wish to examine certain among
+the objections made to my work, but that I should feel some interest in
+the definition and description of a realist. A matter never made clear
+to me.
+
+Now it is a fact that I have never called myself a 'realist,' and I have
+never put forth any work as 'realism.' I decline the labels of the
+schoolmen and the sophisters: being a simple writer of tales, who takes
+whatever means lie to his hand to present life as he sees it; who
+insists on no process; and who refuses to be bound by any formula or
+prescription prepared by the cataloguers and the pigeon-holers of
+literature.
+
+So it happens that when those who use the word 'realist' use it with no
+unanimity of intent and with a loose, inapprehensive application, it is
+not easy for me, who repudiate it altogether, to make a guess at its
+meaning. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the man who is called a
+'realist' is one who, seeing things with his own eyes, discards the
+conventions of the schools, and presents his matter in individual terms
+of art. For awhile the schoolmen abuse him as a realist; and in twenty
+years' time, if his work have life in it, he becomes a classic.
+Constable was called a realist; so was Corot. Who calls these painters
+realists now? The history of Japanese art affords a continuous
+illustration. From the day when Iwasa Matahei impudently arose and dared
+to take his subjects from the daily life of the people, to the day when
+Hiroshigé, casting away the last rag of propriety, adventurously drew a
+cast shadow, in flat defiance of all the canons of Tosa and Kano--in all
+this time, and through all the crowded history of the School of Ukioyé,
+no artist bringing something of his own to his art but was damned for a
+realist. Even the classic Harunobu did not escape. Look now at the work
+of these men, and the label seems grotesque enough. So it goes through
+the making of all art. A man with the courage of his own vision
+interprets what he sees in fresh terms, and gives to things a new
+reality and an immediate presence. The schoolmen peer with dulled eyes
+from amid the heap of precedents and prescriptions about them, and,
+distracted by seeing a thing sanctioned neither by precedent nor by
+prescription, dub the man realist, and rail against him for that his
+work fits none of their pigeon-holes. And from without the schools many
+cry out and complain: for truth is strong meat, and the weakling stomach
+turns against it, except in minim doses smothered in treacle. Thus we
+hear the feeble plea that the function of imagination is the distortion
+of fact: the piteous demand that the artist should be shut up in a
+flower-garden, and forbidden to peep through the hedge into the world.
+And they who know nothing of beauty, who are innately incapable of
+comprehending it, mistake it for mere prettiness, and call aloud for
+comfits; and among them that cannot understand, such definitions of the
+aims of art are bandied, as mean, if they mean anything, that art finds
+its most perfect expression in pink lollipops and gilt boxes. But in
+the end the truth prevails, if it be well set forth; and the schoolmen,
+groaning in their infinite labour, wearily write another prescription,
+admit another precedent, and make another pigeon-hole.
+
+I have been asked, in print, if I think that there is no phase of life
+which the artist may not touch. Most certainly I think this. More, I
+know it. It is the artist's privilege to seek his material where he
+pleases, and it is no man's privilege to say him nay. If the community
+have left horrible places and horrible lives before his eyes, then the
+fault is the community's; and to picture these places and these lives
+becomes not merely his privilege, but his duty. It was my fate to
+encounter a place in Shoreditch, where children were born and reared in
+circumstances which gave them no reasonable chance of living decent
+lives: where they were born fore-damned to a criminal or semi-criminal
+career. It was my experience to learn the ways of this place, to know
+its inhabitants, to talk with them, eat, drink, and work with them. For
+the existence of this place, and for the evils it engendered, the
+community was, and is, responsible; so that every member of the
+community was, and is, responsible in his degree. If I had been a rich
+man I might have attempted to discharge my peculiar responsibility in
+one way; if I had been a statesman I might have tried another. Being
+neither of these things, but a mere writer of fiction, I sought to do my
+duty by writing a tale wherein I hoped to bring the conditions of this
+place within the apprehension of others. There are those who say that I
+should have turned away my eyes and passed by on the other side: on the
+very respectable precedent of the priest and the Levite in the parable.
+
+Now, when the tale was written and published it was found, as I have
+said, to cause discomfort to some persons. It is needless to say more of
+the schoolmen. Needless, too, to say much of the merely genteel: who
+were shocked to read of low creatures, as Kiddo Cook and Pigeony Poll,
+and to find my pages nowhere illuminated by a marquis. Of such are they
+who delight to read of two men in velvet and feathers perforating each
+other's stomachs with swords; while Josh Perrott and Billy Leary,
+punching each other's heads, present a scene too sickening and brutal to
+consider without disgust. And it was in defiance of the maunderings of
+such as these that Charles Lamb wrote much of his essay _On the Genius
+and Character of Hogarth_. But chiefly this book of mine disturbed those
+who had done nothing, and preferred to do nothing, by way of discharging
+their responsibility toward the Jago and the people in it. The
+consciousness of duty neglected is discomforting, and personal comfort
+is the god of their kind. They firmly believe it to be the sole function
+of art to minister to their personal comfort--as upholstery does. They
+find it comfortable to shirk consideration of the fate of the Jago
+children, to shut their eyes to it, to say that all is well and the
+whole world virtuous and happy. And this mental attitude they nickname
+optimism, and vaunt it--exult in it as a quality. So that they cry out
+at the suggestion that it is no more than a selfish vice; and finding
+truth where they had looked for the materials of another debauch of
+self-delusion, they moan aloud: they protest, and they demand as their
+sacred right that the bitter cup be taken from before them. They have
+moaned and protested at _A Child of the Jago_, and, craven and
+bewildered, any protest seemed good enough to them. And herein they have
+not wanted for allies among them that sit in committee-rooms, and
+tinker. For your professed philanthropist, following his own spirit, and
+seeing nothing, honestly resents the demonstration that his tinkering
+profits little. There is a story current in the East End of London, of a
+distracted lady who, being assailed with a request for the loan of a
+saucepan, defended herself in these words:--'Tell yer mother I can't
+lend 'er the saucepan, consekince o' 'avin' lent it to Mrs Brown,
+besides which I'm a-usin' of it meself, an' moreover it's gone to be
+mended, an' what's more I ain't got one.' In a like spirit of lavish
+objection it has been proclaimed in a breath that I transgress:--because
+(1) I should not have written of the Jago in all the nakedness of truth;
+(2) my description is not in the least like; (3) moreover, it is
+exaggerated; (4) though it may be true, it is quite unnecessary, because
+the Jago was already quite familiar, and everybody knew all about it;
+(5) the Jago houses have been pulled down; and (6) there never was any
+such place as the Jago at all.
+
+To objections thus handsomely variegated it is not easy to reply with
+the tripping brevity wherewith they may be stated; and truly it is
+little reply that they call for, except, perhaps, in so far as they may
+be taken to impugn the sincerity of my work and the accuracy of my
+picture. A few of the objectors have caught up enough of their wits to
+strive after a war in my own country. They take hold of my technical
+method, and accuse me of lack of 'sympathy'; they claim that if I write
+of the Jago I should do so 'even weeping.' Now, my technical method is
+my own, and is deliberately designed to achieve a certain result, as is
+the method of every man--painter, poet, sculptor, or novelist--who is
+not the slave and the plaything of his material. My tale is the tale of
+my characters, and I have learned better than to thrust myself and my
+emotions between them and my reader. The cant of the charge stares all
+too plainly from the face of it. It is not that these good people wish
+me to write 'even weeping': for how do they know whether I weep or not?
+No: their wish is, not that I shall weep, but that I shall weep
+obscenely in the public gaze. In other words, that I shall do their
+weeping for them, as a sort of emotional bedesman: that I shall make
+public parade of sympathy in their behalf, so that they may keep their
+own sympathy for themselves, and win comfort from the belief that they
+are eased of their just responsibility by vicarious snivelling.
+
+But the protest, that my picture of the Jago is untrue, is another
+thing. For the most part it has found very vague expression, but there
+are instances of rash excursion into definiteness. Certain passages have
+been denoted as exaggerations--as impossibilities. Now, I must confess
+that, foreseeing such adventurous indiscretions, I had, for my own
+diversion, set _A Child of the Jago_ with traps. For certain years I
+have lived in the East End of London, and have been, not an occasional
+visitor, but a familiar and equal friend in the house of the East-Ender
+in all his degrees; for, though the steps between be smaller, there are
+more social degrees in the East End than ever in the West. In this
+experience I have seen and I have heard things that persons sitting in
+committee-rooms would call diabolical fable; nevertheless, I have seen
+them, and heard them. But it was none of my design to write of extreme
+instances: typical facts were all I wanted; these, I knew, would be
+met--or shirked--with incredulity; so that, whenever I saw reason to
+anticipate a charge of exaggeration--as for instance, in the matter of
+faction fighting--I made my typical incident the cold transcript of a
+simple fact, an ordinary, easy-going fact, a fact notorious in the
+neighbourhood, and capable of any amount of reasonable proof. If I
+touched my fact at all, it was to subdue it; that and no more. The traps
+worked well. Not one definite charge of exaggeration has been flung but
+it has been aimed at one of the normal facts I had provided as a target:
+not one. Sometimes the effect has had a humour of its own; as when a
+critic in a literary journal, beginning by selecting two of my norms as
+instances of 'palpable exaggeration,' went on to assure me that there
+was no need to describe such life as the life in the Jago, because it
+was already perfectly familiar to everybody.
+
+Luckily I need not vindicate my accuracy. That has been done for me
+publicly by independent and altogether indisputable authority. In
+particular, the devoted vicar of the parish, which I have called the
+Jago, has testified quite unreservedly to the truth of my presentation.
+Others also, with special knowledge, have done the same; and though I
+refer to them, and am grateful for their support, it is with no
+prejudice to the validity of my own authority. For not only have I lived
+in the East End of London (which one may do, and yet never see it) but
+observation is my trade.
+
+I have remarked in more than one place the expression of a foolish fancy
+that because the houses of the Old Jago have been pulled down, the Jago
+difficulty has been cleared out of the way. That is far from being the
+case. The Jago, as mere bricks and mortar, is gone. But the Jago in
+flesh and blood still lives, and is crowding into neighbourhoods already
+densely over-populated.
+
+In conclusion: the plan and the intention of my story made it requisite
+that, in telling it, I should largely adhere to fact; and I did so. If I
+write other tales different in scope and design, I shall adhere to fact
+or neglect it as may seem good to me: regardless of anybody's
+classification as a realist, or as anything else. For though I have made
+a suggestion, right or wrong, as to what a realist may be, whether I am
+one or not is no concern of mine; but the concern (if it be anybody's)
+of the tabulators and the watersifters.
+
+A. M.
+
+_February 1897._
+
+
+[Illustration: The Old Jago; Sketch Plan]
+
+
+
+
+A CHILD OF THE JAGO
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+It was past the mid of a summer night in the Old Jago. The narrow street
+was all the blacker for the lurid sky; for there was a fire in a farther
+part of Shoreditch, and the welkin was an infernal coppery glare. Below,
+the hot, heavy air lay, a rank oppression, on the contorted forms of
+those who made for sleep on the pavement: and in it, and through it all,
+there rose from the foul earth and the grimed walls a close, mingled
+stink--the odour of the Jago.
+
+From where, off Shoreditch High Street, a narrow passage, set across
+with posts, gave menacing entrance on one end of Old Jago Street, to
+where the other end lost itself in the black beyond Jago Row; from
+where Jago Row began south at Meakin Street, to where it ended north at
+Honey Lane--there the Jago, for one hundred years the blackest pit in
+London, lay and festered; and half-way along Old Jago Street a narrow
+archway gave upon Jago Court, the blackest hole in all that pit.
+
+A square of two hundred and fifty yards or less--that was all there was
+of the Jago. But in that square the human population swarmed in
+thousands. Old Jago Street, New Jago Street, Half Jago Street lay
+parallel, east and west: Jago Row at one end and Edge Lane at the other
+lay parallel also, stretching north and south: foul ways all. What was
+too vile for Kate Street, Seven Dials, and Ratcliff Highway in its worst
+day, what was too useless, incapable and corrupt--all that teemed in the
+Old Jago.
+
+Old Jago Street lay black and close under the quivering red sky; and
+slinking forms, as of great rats, followed one another quickly between
+the posts in the gut by the High Street, and scattered over the Jago.
+For the crowd about the fire was now small, the police was there in
+force, and every safe pocket had been tried. Soon the incursion ceased,
+and the sky, flickering and brightening no longer, settled to a sullen
+flush. On the pavement some writhed wearily, longing for sleep; others,
+despairing of it, sat and lolled, and a few talked. They were not there
+for lack of shelter, but because in this weather repose was less
+unlikely in the street than within doors: and the lodgings of the few
+who nevertheless abode at home were marked here and there by the lights
+visible from the windows. For in this place none ever slept without a
+light, because of three kinds of vermin that light in some sort keeps at
+bay: vermin which added to existence here a terror not to be guessed by
+the unafflicted: who object to being told of it. For on them that lay
+writhen and gasping on the pavement; on them that sat among them; on
+them that rolled and blasphemed in the lighted rooms; on every moving
+creature in this, the Old Jago, day and night, sleeping and walking, the
+third plague of Egypt, and more, lay unceasing.
+
+The stifling air took a further oppression from the red sky. By the
+dark entrance to Jago Court a man rose, flinging out an oath, and sat
+with his head bowed in his hands.
+
+'Ah--h--h--h,' he said. 'I wish I was dead: an' kep' a cawfy shop.' He
+looked aside from his hands at his neighbours; but Kiddo Cook's ideal of
+heaven was no new thing, and the sole answer was a snort from a dozing
+man a yard away.
+
+Kiddo Cook felt in his pocket and produced a pipe and a screw of paper.
+'This is a bleed'n' unsocial sort o' evenin' party, this is,' he said,
+'An' 'ere's the on'y real toff in the mob with ardly 'arf a pipeful
+left, an' no lights. D' y' 'ear, me lord'--leaning toward the dozing
+neighbour--'got a match?'
+
+'Go t' 'ell!'
+
+'O wot 'orrid langwidge! It's shocking, blimy. Arter that y' ought to
+find me a match. Come on.'
+
+'Go t' 'ell!'
+
+A lank, elderly man, who sat with his back to the wall, pushed up a
+battered tall hat from his eyes, and, producing a box of matches,
+exclaimed 'Hell? And how far's that? You're in it!' He flung abroad a
+bony hand, and glanced upward. Over his forehead a greasy black curl
+dangled and shook as he shuddered back against the wall. 'My God, there
+can be no hell after this!'
+
+'Ah,' Kiddo Cook remarked, as he lit his pipe in the hollow of his
+hands, 'that's a comfort, Mr Beveridge, any'ow.' He returned the
+matches, and the old man, tilting his hat forward, was silent.
+
+A woman, gripping a shawl about her shoulders, came furtively along from
+the posts, with a man walking in her tracks--a little unsteadily. He was
+not of the Jago, but a decent young workman, by his dress. The sight
+took Kiddo Cook's idle eye, and when the couple had passed, he said
+meditatively: 'There's Billy Leary in luck ag'in: 'is missis do pick 'em
+up, s'elp me. I'd carry the cosh meself if I'd got a woman like 'er.'
+
+Cosh-carrying was near to being the major industry of the Jago. The cosh
+was a foot length of iron rod, with a knob at one end, and a hook (or a
+ring) at the other. The craftsman, carrying it in his coat sleeve,
+waited about dark staircase corners till his wife (married or not)
+brought in a well drunken stranger: when, with a sudden blow behind the
+head, the stranger was happily coshed, and whatever was found on him as
+he lay insensible was the profit on the transaction. In the hands of
+capable practitioners this industry yielded a comfortable subsistence
+for no great exertion. Most, of course, depended on the woman: whose
+duty it was to keep the other artist going in subjects. There were
+legends of surprising ingatherings achieved by wives of especial
+diligence: one of a woman who had brought to the cosh some
+six-and-twenty on a night of public rejoicing. This was, however, a
+story years old, and may have been no more than an exemplary fiction,
+designed, like a Sunday School book, to convey a counsel of perfection
+to the dutiful matrons of the Old Jago.
+
+The man and woman vanished in a doorway near the Jago Row end, where,
+for some reason, dossers were fewer than about the portal of Jago Court.
+There conversation flagged, and a broken snore was heard. It was a
+quiet night, as quietness was counted in the Jago; for it was too hot
+for most to fight in that stifling air--too hot to do more than turn on
+the stones and swear. Still the last hoarse yelps of a combat of women
+came intermittently from Half Jago Street in the further confines.
+
+In a little while something large and dark was pushed forth from the
+door-opening near Jago Row which Billy Leary's spouse had entered. The
+thing rolled over, and lay tumbled on the pavement, for a time unnoted.
+It might have been yet another would-be sleeper, but for its stillness.
+Just such a thing it seemed, belike, to two that lifted their heads and
+peered from a few yards off, till they rose on hands and knees and crept
+to where it lay: Jago rats both. A man it was; with a thick smear across
+his face, and about his head the source of the dark trickle that sought
+the gutter deviously over the broken flags. The drab stuff of his
+pockets peeped out here and there in a crumpled bunch, and his waistcoat
+gaped where the watch-guard had been. Clearly, here was an uncommonly
+remunerative cosh--a cosh so good that the boots had been neglected,
+and remained on the man's feet. These the kneeling two unlaced deftly,
+and, rising, prize in hand, vanished in the deeper shadow of Jago Row.
+
+A small boy, whom they met full tilt at the corner, staggered out to the
+gutter and flung a veteran curse after them. He was a slight child, by
+whose size you might have judged his age at five. But his face was of
+serious and troubled age. One who knew the children of the Jago, and
+could tell, might have held him eight, or from that to nine.
+
+He replaced his hands in his trousers pockets, and trudged up the
+street. As he brushed by the coshed man he glanced again toward Jago
+Row, and, jerking his thumb that way, 'Done 'im for 'is boots,' he
+piped. But nobody marked him till he reached Jago Court, when old
+Beveridge, pushing back his hat once more, called sweetly and silkily,
+'Dicky Perrott!' and beckoned with his finger.
+
+The boy approached, and as he did so the man's skeleton
+hand suddenly shot out and gripped him by the collar.
+'It--never--does--to--see--too--much!' Beveridge said, in a series of
+shouts, close to the boy's ear. 'Now go home,' he added, in a more
+ordinary tone, with a push to make his meaning plain: and straightway
+relapsed against the wall.
+
+The boy scowled and backed off the pavement. His ragged jacket was
+coarsely made from one much larger, and he hitched the collar over his
+shoulder as he shrank toward a doorway some few yards on. Front doors
+were used merely as firewood in the Old Jago, and most had been burnt
+there many years ago. If perchance one could have been found still on
+its hinges, it stood ever open and probably would not shut. Thus at
+night the Jago doorways were a row of black holes, foul and forbidding.
+
+Dicky Perrott entered his hole with caution, for anywhere, in the
+passage and on the stairs, somebody might be lying drunk, against whom
+it would be unsafe to stumble. He found nobody, however, and climbed and
+reckoned his way up the first stair-flight with the necessary regard
+for the treads that one might step through and the rails that had gone
+from the side. Then he pushed open the door of the first-floor back and
+was at home.
+
+A little heap of guttering grease, not long ago a candle end, stood and
+spread on the mantel-piece, and gave irregular light from its drooping
+wick. A thin-railed iron bedstead, bent and staggering, stood against a
+wall, and on its murky coverings a half-dressed woman sat and neglected
+a baby that lay by her, grieving and wheezing. The woman had a long
+dolorous face, empty of expression and weak of mouth.
+
+'Where 'a' you bin, Dicky?' she asked, rather complaining than asking.
+'It's sich low hours for a boy.'
+
+Dicky glanced about the room. 'Got anythink to eat?' he asked.
+
+'I dunno,' she answered listlessly. 'P'raps there's a bit o' bread in
+the cupboard. I don't want nothin', it's so 'ot. An' father ain't bin
+'ome since tea-time.'
+
+The boy rummaged and found a crust. Gnawing at this, he crossed to
+where the baby lay. ''Ullo, Looey,' he said, bending and patting the
+muddy cheek. ''Ullo!'
+
+The baby turned feebly on its back, and set up a thin wail. Its eyes
+were large and bright, its tiny face was piteously flea-bitten and
+strangely old. 'Wy, she's 'ungry, mother,' said Dicky Perrott, and took
+the little thing up.
+
+He sat on a small box, and rocked the baby on his knees, feeding it with
+morsels of chewed bread. The mother, dolefully inert, looked on and
+said: 'She's that backward I'm quite wore out; more 'n ten months old,
+an' don't even crawl yut. It's a never-endin' trouble, is children.'
+
+She sighed, and presently stretched herself on the bed. The boy rose,
+and carrying his little sister with care, for she was dozing, essayed to
+look through the grimy window. The dull flush still spread overhead, but
+Jago Court lay darkling below, with scarce a sign of the ruinous back
+yards that edged it on this and the opposite sides, and nothing but
+blackness between.
+
+The boy returned to his box, and sat. Then he said: 'I don't s'pose
+father's 'avin' a sleep outside, eh?'
+
+The woman sat up with some show of energy. 'Wot?' she said sharply.
+'Sleep out in the street like them low Ranns an' Learys? I should 'ope
+not. It's bad enough livin' 'ere at all, an' me being used to different
+things once, an' all. You ain't seen 'im outside, 'ave ye?'
+
+'No, I ain't seen 'im: I jist looked in the court.' Then, after a pause:
+'I 'ope 'e's done a click,' the boy said.
+
+His mother winced. 'I dunno wot you mean, Dicky,' she said, but
+falteringly. 'You--you're gittin' that low an' an'--'
+
+'Wy, copped somethink, o' course. Nicked somethink. You know.'
+
+'If you say sich things as that I'll tell 'im wot you say, an' 'e'll pay
+you. We ain't that sort o' people, Dicky, you ought to know. I was alwis
+kep' respectable an' straight all my life, I'm sure, an'--'
+
+'I know. You said so before, to father--I 'eard: w'en 'e brought 'ome
+that there yuller prop--the necktie pin. Wy, where did 'e git that? 'E
+ain't 'ad a job for munse and munse: where's the yannups come from wot's
+bin for to pay the rent, an' git the toke, an' milk for Looey? Think I
+dunno? I ain't a kid. I know.'
+
+'Dicky, Dicky! you mustn't say sich things!' was all the mother could
+find to say, with tears in her slack eyes. 'It's wicked an'--an' low.
+An' you must alwis be respectable an' straight, Dicky, an'
+you'll--you'll git on then.'
+
+'Straight people's fools, _I_ reckon. Kiddo Cook says that, an' 'e's as
+wide as Broad Street. W'en I grow up I'm goin' to git toffs' clo'es an'
+be in the 'igh mob. They does big clicks.'
+
+'They git put in a dark prison for years an' years, Dicky--an'--an' if
+you're sich a wicked low boy, father 'll give you the strap--'ard,' the
+mother returned, with what earnestness she might. 'Gimme the baby, an'
+you go to bed, go on; 'fore father comes.'
+
+Dicky handed over the baby, whose wizen face was now relaxed in sleep,
+and slowly disencumbered himself of the ungainly jacket, staring at the
+wall in a brown study. 'It's the mugs wot git took,' he said, absently.
+'An' quoddin' ain't so bad.' Then, after a pause, he turned and added
+suddenly: 'S'pose father'll be smugged some day, eh, mother?'
+
+His mother made no reply, but bent languidly over the baby, with an
+indefinite pretence of settling it in a place on the bed. Soon Dicky
+himself, in the short and ragged shirt he had worn under the jacket,
+burrowed head first among the dingy coverings at the foot, and
+protruding his head at the further side, took his accustomed place
+crosswise at the extreme end.
+
+The filthy ceiling lit and darkened by fits as the candle-wick fell and
+guttered to its end. He heard his mother rise and find another fragment
+of candle to light by its expiring flame, but he lay still wakeful.
+After a time he asked: 'Mother, why don't you come to bed?'
+
+'Waitin' for father. Go to sleep.'
+
+He was silent for a little. But brain and eyes were wide awake, and soon
+he spoke again. 'Them noo 'uns in the front room,' he said. 'Ain't the
+man give 'is wife a 'idin' yut?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Nor yut the boy--'umpty-backed 'un?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Seems they're mighty pertickler. Fancy theirselves too good for their
+neighbours; I 'eard Pigeony Poll say that; on'y Poll said--'
+
+'You mustn't never listen to Pigeony Poll, Dicky. Ain't you 'eard me say
+so? Go to sleep. 'Ere comes father.' There was, indeed, a step on the
+stairs, but it passed the landing, and went on to the top floor. Dicky
+lay awake, but silent, gazing upward and back through the dirty window
+just over his head. It was very hot, and he fidgeted uncomfortably,
+fearing to turn or toss lest the baby should wake and cry. There came a
+change in the hue of the sky, and he watched the patch within his view,
+until the red seemed to gather in spots, and fade a spot at a time. Then
+at last there was a tread on the stairs, that stayed at the door; and
+father had come home. Dicky lay still, and listened.
+
+'Lor, Josh, where ye bin?' Dicky heard his mother say. 'I'm almost wore
+out a-waitin'.'
+
+'Awright, awright'--this in a hoarse grunt, little above a whisper. 'Got
+any water up 'ere? Wash this 'ere stick.'
+
+There was a pause, wherein Dicky knew his mother looked about her in
+vacant doubt as to whether or not water was in the room. Then a quick,
+undertoned scream, and the stick rattled heavily on the floor. 'It's
+sticky!' his mother said. 'O my Gawd, Josh, look at that--an' bits o'
+'air, too!' The great shadow of an open hand shot up across the ceiling
+and fell again. 'O Josh! O my Gawd! You ain't, 'ave ye? Not--not--not
+that?'
+
+'Not wot? Gawblimy, not what? Shutcher mouth. If a man fights, you're
+got to fight back, ain' cher? Any one 'ud think it was a murder, to look
+at ye. I ain't sich a damn fool as that. 'Ere--pull up that board.'
+
+Dicky knew the loose floor-board that was lifted with a slight groaning
+jar. It was to the right of the hearth, and he had shammed sleep when it
+had been lifted once before. His mother whimpered and cried quietly.
+'You'll git in trouble, Josh,' she said. 'I wish you'd git a reg'lar
+job, Josh, like what you used--I do--I do.'
+
+The board was shut down again. Dicky Perrott through one opened eye saw
+the sky a pale grey above, and hoped the click had been a good one:
+hoped also that it might bring bullock's liver for dinner.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out in the Jago the pale dawn brought a cooler air and the chance of
+sleep. From the paving of Old Jago Street sad grey faces, open-mouthed,
+looked upward as from the Valley of Dry Bones. Down by Jago Row the
+coshed subject, with the blood dry on his face, felt the colder air, and
+moved a leg.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Three-quarters of a mile east of the Jago's outermost limit was the East
+End Elevation Mission and Pansophical Institute: such was the amazing
+success whereof, that a new wing had been built, and was now to be
+declared open by a Bishop of great eminence and industry.
+
+The triumphs of the East End Elevation Mission and Pansophical Institute
+were known and appreciated far from East London, by people who knew less
+of that part than of Asia Minor. Indeed, they were chiefly appreciated
+by these. There were kept, perpetually on tap for the aspiring East
+Ender, the Higher Life, the Greater Thought, and the Wider Humanity:
+with other radiant abstractions, mostly in the comparative degree,
+specifics all for the manufacture of the Superior Person. There were
+many Lectures given on still more subjects. Pictures were borrowed and
+shown, with revelations to the Uninformed of the morals ingeniously
+concealed by the painters. The Uninformed were also encouraged to debate
+and to produce papers on literary and political matters, while still
+unencumbered with the smallest knowledge thereof: for the Enlargement of
+the Understanding and the Embellishment of the Intellect. And there were
+classes, and clubs, and newspapers, and games of draughts, and musical
+evenings, and a brass band, whereby the life of the Hopeless Poor might
+be coloured, and the Misery of the Submerged alleviated. The wretches
+who crowded to these benefits were tradesmen's sons, small shop-keepers
+and their families, and neat clerks, with here and there a smart young
+artisan of one of the especially respectable trades. They freely
+patronised the clubs, the musical evenings, the brass band, and the
+bagatelle board; and those who took themselves seriously debated and
+Mutually-Improved with pomp. Others, subject to savage fits of
+wanting-to-know, made short rushes at random evening classes, with
+intervals of disgusted apathy. Altogether, a number of decently-dressed
+and mannerly young men passed many evenings at the Pansophical Institute
+in harmless pleasures, and often with an agreeable illusion of
+intellectual advance.
+
+Other young men, more fortunately circumstanced, with the educational
+varnish fresh and raw upon them, came from afar, equipped with a foreign
+mode of thought and a proper ignorance of the world and the proportions
+of things, as Missionaries. Not without some anxiety to their parents,
+they plunged into the perilous deeps of the East End, to struggle--for a
+fortnight--with its suffering and its brutishness. So they went among
+the tradesmen's sons and the shopmen, who endured them as they endured
+the nominal subscription; and they came away with a certain relief, and
+with some misgiving as to what impression they had made, and what they
+had done to make it. But it was with knowledge and authority that they
+went back among those who had doubted their personal safety in the dark
+region. The East End, they reported, was nothing like what it was said
+to be. You could see much worse places up West. The people were quite a
+decent sort, in their way: shocking Bounders, of course; but quite clean
+and quiet, and very comfortably dressed, with ties and collars and
+watches.
+
+But the Missionaries were few, and the subscribers to the Elevation
+Mission were many. Most had been convinced, by what they had been told,
+by what they had read in charity appeals, and perhaps by what they had
+seen in police-court and inquest reports, that the whole East End was a
+wilderness of slums: slums packed with starving human organisms without
+minds and without morals, preying on each other alive. These subscribers
+visited the Institute by twos and threes, on occasions of particular
+festivity among the neat clerks, and were astonished at the wonderful
+effects of Pansophic Elevation on the degraded classes, their aspect and
+their habits. Perhaps it was a concert where nobody was drunk: perhaps a
+little dance where nobody howled a chorus, nor wore his hat, nor punched
+his partner in the eye. It was a great marvel, whereunto the observers
+testified: so that more subscriptions came, and the new wing was built.
+
+The afternoon was bright, and all was promising. A small crowd of idlers
+hung about the main door of the Institute, and stared at a string of
+flags. Away to the left stood the new wing, a face of fair, clean brick;
+the ornamentation, of approved earnestness, in terra-cotta squares at
+regular intervals. Within sat many friends and relations of the shopmen
+and superior mechanics, and waited for the Bishop; the Eminences of the
+Elevation Mission sitting apart on the platform. Without, among the
+idlers, waited Dicky Perrott. His notions of what were going on were
+indistinct, but he had a belief, imbibed through rumour and tradition,
+that all celebrations at such large buildings were accompanied by the
+consumption, in the innermost recesses, of cake and tea. Even to be near
+cake was something. In Shoreditch High Street was a shop where cake
+stood in the window in great slabs, one slab over another, to an
+incalculable value. At this window--against it, as near as possible,
+his face flattened white--Dicky would stand till the shop-keeper drove
+him off: till he had but to shut his eyes to see once more, in the
+shifting black, the rich yellow sections with their myriad raisins. Once
+a careless errand-boy, who had bought a slice, took so clumsy a bite as
+he emerged that near a third of the whole piece broke and fell; and this
+Dicky had snatched from the paving and bolted with, ere the owner quite
+saw his loss. This was a superior sort of cake, at a penny. But once he
+had managed to buy himself a slice of an inferior sort for a halfpenny,
+in Meakin Street.
+
+Dicky Perrott, these blessed memories in his brain, stood unobtrusively
+near the door, with the big jacket buttoned over as decently as might
+be, full of a desperate design: which was to get inside by whatsoever
+manner of trick or opportunity he might, and so, if it were humanly
+possible, to the cake.
+
+The tickets were being taken at the door by an ardent young
+Elevator--one of the missionaries. Him, and all such washed and
+well-dressed people, Dicky had learnt to hold in serene contempt when
+the business in hand was dodging. There was no hurry: the Elevator might
+waste his vigilance on the ticket-holders for some time yet. And Dicky
+knew better than to betray the smallest sign of a desire for entrance
+while his enemy's attention was awake.
+
+Carriages drew up, and yielded more Eminences: toward the end the Bishop
+himself, whom Dicky observed but as a pleasant-looking old gentleman in
+uncommon clothes; and on whom he bestowed no more thought than a passing
+wonder at what might be the accident to his hat which had necessitated
+its repair with string.
+
+But at the spikes of the Bishop's carriage came another; and out of that
+there got three ladies, friends of the ticket-receiver, on whom they
+closed, greeting and shaking hands; and in a flash Dicky Perrott was
+beyond the lobby and moving obscurely along the walls of the inner hall,
+behind pillars and in shadow, seeking cake.
+
+The Choral Society sang their lustiest, and there were speeches.
+Eminences expressed their surprise and delight at finding the people of
+the East End, gathered in the Institute building, so respectable and
+clean, thanks to persistent, indefatigable, unselfish Elevation.
+
+The good Bishop, amid clapping of hands and fluttering of handkerchiefs,
+piped cherubically of everything. He rejoiced to see that day, whereon
+the helping hand of the West was so unmistakably made apparent in the
+East. He rejoiced also to find himself in the midst of so admirably
+typical an assemblage--so representative, if he might say so, of that
+great East End of London, thirsting and crying out for--for Elevation:
+for that--ah--Elevation which the more fortunately circumstanced
+denizens of--of other places, had so munificently--laid on. The people
+of the East End had been sadly misrepresented--in popular periodicals
+and in--in other ways. The East End, he was convinced, was not so black
+as it was painted. (Applause.) He had but to look about him. _Etcetera,
+etcetera._ He questioned whether so well-conducted, morally-given, and
+respectable a gathering could be brought together in any West End parish
+with which he was acquainted. It was his most pleasant duty on this
+occasion--and so on and so forth.
+
+Dicky Perrott had found the cake. It was in a much smaller room at the
+back of the hall, wherein it was expected that the Bishop and certain
+Eminences of the platform would refresh themselves with tea after the
+ceremony. There were heavy, drooping curtains at the door of this room,
+and deep from the largest folds the ratling from the Jago watched. The
+table was guarded by a sour-faced man--just such a man as drove him from
+the window of the cake shop in Shoreditch High Street. Nobody else was
+there yet, and plainly the sour-faced man must be absent or busy ere the
+cake could be got at.
+
+There was a burst of applause in the hall: the new wing had been
+declared open. Then there was more singing, and after that much
+shuffling and tramping, for everybody was free to survey the new rooms
+on the way out; and the Importances from the platform came to find the
+tea.
+
+Filling the room and standing about in little groups; chatting,
+munching, and sipping, while the sour-faced man distractedly floundered
+amid crockery: not a soul of them all perceived an inconsiderable small
+boy, ducking and dodging vaguely among legs and round skirts, making,
+from time to time, a silent snatch at a plate on the table: and
+presently he vanished altogether. Then the amiable Bishop, beaming over
+the tea-cup six inches from his chin, at two courtiers of the clergy,
+bethought him of a dinner engagement, and passed his hand downward over
+the rotundity of his waistcoat.
+
+'Dear, dear,' said the Bishop, glancing down suddenly, 'why--what's
+become of my watch?'
+
+There hung three inches of black ribbon, with a cut end. The Bishop
+looked blankly at the Elevators about him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three streets off, Dicky Perrott, with his shut fist deep in his
+breeches pocket, and a gold watch in the fist, ran full drive for the
+Old Jago.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+There was nobody in chase; but Dicky Perrott, excited by his novel
+exploit, ran hard: forgetting the lesson first learnt by every child of
+the Jago, to avoid, as far as may be, suspicious flight in open streets.
+He burst into the Old Jago from the Jago Row corner, by Meakin Street;
+and still he ran. A small boy a trifle bigger than himself made a sharp
+punch at him as he passed, but he took no heed. The hulking group at the
+corner of Old Jago Street, ever observant of weaklings with plunder, saw
+him, and one tried to catch his arm, but he had the wit to dodge. Past
+the Jago Court passage he scudded, in at the familiar doorway, and up
+the stairs. A pale hunchbacked child, clean and wistful, descended, and
+him Dicky flung aside and half downstairs with 'Git out, 'ump!'
+
+Josh Perrott sat on the bed, eating fried fish from an oily paper; for
+it was tea-time. He was a man of thirty-two, of middle height and
+stoutly built, with a hard, leathery face as of one much older. The hair
+about his mouth seemed always three days old--never much less nor much
+more. He was a plasterer--had, at least, so described himself at
+police-courts. But it was long since he had plastered, though he still
+walked abroad splashed and speckled, as though from an eruption of
+inherent plaster. In moments of pride he declared himself the only
+member of his family who had ever learned a trade, and worked at it. It
+was a long relinquished habit, but while it lasted he had married a
+decent boiler-maker's daughter, who had known nothing of the Jago till
+these latter days. One other boast Josh Perrott had: that nothing but
+shot or pointed steel could hurt him. And this, too, was near being a
+true boast; as he had proved in more than one fight in the local
+arena--which was Jago Court. Now he sat peaceably on the edge of the
+bed, and plucked with his fingers at the oily fish, while his wife
+grubbed hopelessly about the cupboard shelves for the screw of paper
+which was the sugar-basin.
+
+Dicky entered at a burst. 'Mother--father--look! I done a click! I got a
+clock--a red 'un!'
+
+Josh Perrott stopped, jaw and hand, with a pinch of fish poised in air.
+The woman turned, and her chin fell. 'O, Dicky, Dicky,' she cried, in
+real distress, 'you're a awful low, wicked boy. My Gawd, Josh, 'e--'e'll
+grow up bad: I said so.'
+
+Josh Perrott bolted the pinch of fish, and sucked his fingers as he
+sprang to the door. After a quick glance down the stairs he shut it, and
+turned to Dicky. 'Where d'je get that, ye young devel?' he asked, and
+snatched the watch.
+
+'Claimed it auf a ol' bloke w'en 'e was drinkin' 'is tea,' Dicky
+replied, with sparkling eyes. 'Let's 'ave a look at it, father.'
+
+'Did 'e run after ye?'
+
+'No--didn't know nuffin' about it. I cut 'is bit o' ribbin with my
+knife.' Dicky held up a treasured relic of blade and handle, found in a
+gutter. 'Ain' cher goin' to let's 'ave a look at it?'
+
+Josh Perrott looked doubtfully toward his wife: the children were
+chiefly her concern. Of her sentiments there could be no mistake. He
+slipped the watch into his own pocket, and caught Dicky by the collar.
+
+'I'll give you somethink, you dam young thief,' he exclaimed, slipping
+off his belt. 'You'd like to have us all in stir for a year or two, I
+s'pose; goin' thievin' watches like a growed-up man.' And he plied the
+belt savagely, while Dicky, amazed, breathless and choking, spun about
+him with piteous squeals, and the baby woke and puled in feeble
+sympathy.
+
+There was a rip, and the collar began to leave the old jacket. Feeling
+this, Josh Perrott released it, and with a quick drive of the fist in
+the neck sent Dicky staggering across the room. Dicky caught at the bed
+frame, and limped out to the landing, sobbing grievously in the bend of
+his sleeve.
+
+It was more than his mother had intended, but she knew better than to
+attempt interference. Now that he was gone, she said, with some
+hesitation: ''Adn't you better take it out at once, Josh?'
+
+'Yus, I'm goin',' Josh replied, turning the watch in his hand. 'It's a
+good 'un--a topper.'
+
+'You--you won't let Weech 'ave it, will ye, Josh? 'E--'e never gives
+much.'
+
+'No bloomin' fear. I'm goin' up 'Oxton with this 'ere.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dicky sobbed his way down the stairs and through the passage to the
+back. In the yard he looked for Tommy Rann, to sympathise. But Tommy was
+not, and Dicky paused in his grief to reflect that perhaps, indeed, in
+the light of calm reason, he would rather cast the story of the watch in
+a more heroic mould, for Tommy's benefit, than was compatible with tears
+and a belted back. So he turned and squeezed through a hole in the
+broken fence, sobbing again, in search of the friend that shared his
+inmost sorrows.
+
+The belting was bad--very bad. There was broken skin on his shins where
+the strap had curled round, and there was a little sticky blood under
+the shirt half way up his back: to say nothing of bruises. But it was
+the hopeless injustice of things that shook him to the soul. Wholly
+unaided, he had done, with neatness and credit, a click that anybody in
+the Jago would have been proud of. Overjoyed, he had hastened to receive
+the commendations of his father and mother, and to place the prize in
+their hands, freely and generously, though perhaps with some hope of hot
+supper by way of celebration. And his reward was this. Why? He could
+understand nothing: could but feel the wrong that broke his heart. And
+so, sobbing, he crawled through two fences to weep on the shaggy neck of
+Jerry Gullen's canary.
+
+Jerry Gullen's canary was no bird, but a donkey: employed by Jerry
+Gullen in his occasional intervals of sobriety to drag a cranky shallow,
+sometimes stored with glass bottles, rags, and hearth-stone: sometimes
+with firewood manufactured from a convenient hoarding, or from the
+joinery of an empty house: sometimes with empty sacks covering
+miscellaneous property suddenly acquired and not for general inspection.
+His vacations, many and long, Jerry Gullen's canary spent, forgotten and
+unfed, in Jerry Gullen's back-yard: gnawing desperately at fences, and
+harrowing the neighbourhood with his bray. Thus the nickname,
+facetiously applied by Kiddo Cook in celebration of his piteous song,
+grew into use; and 'Canary' would call the creature's attention as
+readily as a mouthful of imprecations.
+
+Jerry Gullen's canary was gnawing, gnawing, with a sound as of a crooked
+centre-bit. Everywhere about the foul yard, ten or twelve feet square,
+wood was rounded and splintered and bitten white, and as the donkey
+turned his heavy head, a drip of blood from his gums made a disc on the
+stones. A twitch of the ears welcomed Dicky, grief-stricken as he was;
+for it was commonly thus that he bethought him of solace in Jerry
+Gullen's back-yard. And so Dicky, his arms about the mangy neck, told
+the tale of his wrongs till consolation came in composition of the
+heroic narrative designed for Tommy Rann.
+
+'O, Canary, it is a blasted shame!'
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+When Dicky Perrott came running into Jago Row with the Bishop's watch in
+his pocket, another boy punched a fist at him, and at the time Dicky was
+at a loss to guess the cause--unless it were a simple caprice--but
+stayed neither to inquire nor to retaliate. The fact was that the Ranns
+and the Learys were coming out, fighting was in the air, and the small
+boy, meeting another a trifle smaller, punched on general principles.
+The Ranns and the Learys, ever at war or in guarded armistice, were the
+great rival families--the Montagues and the Capulets--of the old Jago.
+The Learys indeed, scarce pretended to rivalry--rather to factious
+opposition. For the Ranns gloried in the style and title of the 'Royal
+Family,' and dominated the Jago; but there were mighty fighters, men
+and women, among the Learys, and when a combat arose it was a hard one
+and an animated. The two families ramified throughout the Jago; and
+under the Rann standard, whether by kin or by custom, were the Gullens,
+the Fishers, the Spicers, and the Walshes; while in the Leary train came
+Dawsons, Greens, and Harnwells. So that near all the Jago was wont to be
+on one side or the other, and any of the Jago which was not, was apt to
+be the worse for it; for the Ranns drubbed all them that were not of
+their faction in the most thorough and most workmanlike manner, and the
+Learys held by the same practice; so that neutrality meant double
+drubbing. But when the Ranns and Learys combined, and the Old Jago
+issued forth in its entire might against Dove Lane, then the battle was
+one to go miles to see.
+
+This, however, was but a Rann and Leary fight; and it was but in its
+early stages when Dicky Perrott, emerging from Jerry Gullen's back-yard,
+made for Shoreditch High Street by way of the 'Posties'--the passage
+with posts at the end of Old Jago Street. His purpose was to snatch a
+handful of hay from some passing waggon, or of mixed fodder from some
+unguarded nosebag, wherewith to reward the sympathy of Jerry Gullen's
+canary. But by the 'Posties,' at the Edge Lane corner, Tommy Rann,
+capless, and with a purple bump on his forehead, came flying into his
+arms, breathless, exultant, a babbling braggart. He had fought Johnny
+Leary and Joe Dawson, he said, one after the other, and pretty nigh
+broke Johnny Leary's blasted neck; and Joe's Dawson's big brother was
+after him now with a bleed'n' shovel. So the two children ran on
+together, and sought the seclusion of their own back yard; where the
+story of Johnny Rann's prowess, with scowls and the pounding of
+imaginary foes, and the story of the Bishop's watch, with suppressions
+and improvements, mingled and contended in the thickening dusk. And
+Jerry Gullen's canary went forgotten and unrequited.
+
+That night fighting was sporadic and desultory in the Jago. Bob the
+Bender was reported to have a smashed nose, and Sam Cash had his head
+bandaged at the hospital. At the Bag of Nails in Edge Lane, Snob Spicer
+was knocked out of knowledge with a quart pot, and Cocko Harnwell's
+missis had a piece bitten off of one ear. As the night wore on, taunts
+and defiances were bandied from window to door, and from door to window,
+between those who intended to begin fighting to-morrow; and shouts from
+divers corners gave notice of isolated scuffles. Once a succession of
+piercing screams seemed to betoken that Sally Green had begun. There was
+a note in the screams of Sally Green's opposites which the Jago had
+learned to recognise. Sally Green, though of the weaker faction, was the
+female champion of the Old Jago: an eminence won and kept by fighting
+tactics peculiar to herself. For it was her way, reserving teeth and
+nails, to wrestle closely with her antagonist, throw her by a dexterous
+twist on her face, and fall on her, instantly seizing the victim's nape
+in her teeth, gnawing and worrying. The sufferer's screams were audible
+afar, and beyond their invariable eccentricity of quality--a quality a
+vaguely suggestive of dire surprise--they had mechanical persistence, a
+pump-like regularity, that distinguished them, in the accustomed ear,
+from other screams.
+
+Josh Perrott had not been home all the evening: probably the Bishop's
+watch was in course of transmutation into beer. Dicky, stiff and
+domestically inclined, nursed Looey and listened to the noises without
+till he fell asleep, in hopeful anticipation of the morrow. For Tommy
+Rann had promised him half of a broken iron railing wherewith to fight
+the Learys.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Sleep in the Jago was at best a thing of intermission, for
+reasons--reasons of multitude--already denoted; nevertheless Dicky slept
+well enough to be unconscious of his father's homecoming. In the
+morning, however, there lay Josh Perrott, snoring thunderously on the
+floor, piebald with road-dust. This was not a morning whereon father
+would want breakfast--that was plain: he would wake thirsty and savage.
+So Dicky made sure of a crust from the cupboard, and betook himself in
+search of Tommy Rann. As to washing, he was never especially fond of it,
+and in any case there were fifty excellent excuses for neglect. The only
+water was that from the little tap in the back yard. The little tap was
+usually out of order, or had been stolen bodily by a tenant; and if it
+were not, there was no basin there, nor any soap, nor towel; and
+anything savouring of moderate cleanliness was resented in the Jago as
+an assumption of superiority.
+
+Fighting began early, fast and furious. The Ranns got together soon, and
+hunted the Learys up and down, and attacked them in their houses: the
+Learys' chances only coming when straggling Ranns were cut off from the
+main body. The weapons in use, as was customary, rose in effectiveness
+by a swiftly ascending scale. The Learys, assailed with sticks, replied
+with sticks torn from old packing-cases, with protruding nails. The two
+sides bethought them of coshes simultaneously, and such as had no
+coshes--very few--had pokers and iron railings. Ginger Stagg, at bay in
+his passage, laid open Pud Palmer's cheek with a chisel; and, knives
+thus happily legitimised with the least possible preliminary form,
+everybody was free to lay hold of whatever came handy.
+
+In Old Jago Street, half way between Jago Court and Edge Lane, stood the
+Feathers, the grimiest and vilest of the four public-houses in the
+Jago. Into the Feathers some dozen Learys were driven, and for a while
+they held the inner bar and the tap-room against the Ranns, who swarmed
+after them, chairs, bottles, and pewter pots flying thick, while Mother
+Gapp, the landlady, hung hysterical on the beer-pulls in the bar,
+supplicating and blubbering aloud. Then a partition came down with a
+crash, bringing shelves and many glasses with it, and the Ranns rushed
+over the ruin, beating the Learys down, jumping on them, heaving them
+through the back windows. Having thus cleared the house of the intruding
+enemy, the Ranns demanded recompense of liquor, and took it, dragging
+handles off beer-engines, seizing bottles, breaking into the cellar, and
+driving in bungs. Nobody better than Mother Gapp could quell an ordinary
+bar riot--even to knocking a man down with a pot; but she knew better
+than to attempt interference now. Nothing could have made her swoon, but
+she sat limp and helpless, weeping and blaspheming.
+
+The Ranns cleared off, every man with a bottle or so, and scattered, and
+this for a while was their undoing. For the Learys rallied and hunted
+the Ranns in their turn: a crowd of eighty or a hundred sweeping the
+Jago from Honey Lane to Meakin Street. Then they swung back through Edge
+Lane to Old Jago Street, and made for Jerry Gullen's--a house full of
+Ranns. Jerry Gullen, Bill Rann, and the rest took refuge in the upper
+floors and barricaded the stairs. Below, the Learys broke windows and
+ravaged the rooms, smashing whatsoever of furniture was to be found.
+Above, Pip Walsh, who affected horticulture on his window-sill, hurled
+down flower-pots. On the stairs, Billy Leary, scaling the barricade, was
+flung from top to bottom, and had to be carried home. And then Pip
+Walsh's missis scattered the besiegers on the pavement below with a
+kettleful of boiling water.
+
+There was a sudden sortie of Ranns from Jago Court, but it profited
+nothing; for the party was small, and, its advent being unexpected,
+there was a lack of prompt co-operation from the house. The Learys held
+the field.
+
+Down the middle of Old Jago Street came Sally Green: red faced,
+stripped to the waist, dancing, hoarse and triumphant. Nail-scores wide
+as the finger striped her back, her face, and her throat, and she had a
+black eye; but in one great hand she dangled a long bunch of clotted
+hair, as she whooped defiance to the Jago. It was a trophy newly rent
+from the scalp of Norah Walsh, champion of the Rann womankind, who had
+crawled away to hide her blighted head, and be restored with gin. None
+answered Sally's challenge, and, staying but to fling a brickbat at Pip
+Walsh's window, she carried her dance and her trophy into Edge Lane.
+
+The scrimmage on Jerry Gullen's stairs was thundering anew, and parties
+of Learys were making for other houses in the street, when there came a
+volley of yells from Jago Row, heralding a scudding mob of Ranns. The
+defeated sortie-party from Jago Court, driven back, had gained New Jago
+Street by way of the house-passages behind the Court, and set to
+gathering the scattered faction. Now the Ranns came, drunk, semi-drunk,
+and otherwise, and the Learys, leaving Jerry Gullen's, rushed to meet
+them. There was a great shock, hats flew, sticks and heads made a wooden
+rattle, and instantly the two mobs were broken into an uproarious
+confusion of tangled groups, howling and grappling. Here a man crawled
+into a passage to nurse a broken head; there a knot gathered to kick a
+sprawling foe. So the fight thinned out and spread, resolving into many
+independent combats, with concerted rushes of less and less frequency,
+till once again all through the Jago each fought for his own hand. Kiddo
+Cook, always humorous, ran hilariously through the streets, brandishing
+a long roll of twisted paper, wherewith he smacked the heads of Learys
+all and sundry, who realised too late that the paper was twisted round a
+lodging-house poker.
+
+Now, of the few neutral Jagos: most lay low. Josh Perrott, however, hard
+as nails and respected for it, feared neither Rann nor Leary, and
+leaving a little money with his missis, carried his morning mouth in
+search of beer. Pigeony Poll, harlot and outcast, despised for that she
+neither fought nor kept a cosh-carrier, like a respectable married
+woman, slunk and trembled in corners and yards, and wept at the sight of
+bleeding heads. As for old Beveridge, the affair so grossly excited him
+that he neglected business (he cadged and wrote begging screeves) and
+stayed in the Jago, where he strode wildly about the streets, lank and
+rusty, stabbing the air with a carving knife, and incoherently defying
+'all the lot' to come near him. Nobody did.
+
+Dicky Perrott and Tommy Rann found a snug fastness in Jago Row. For
+there was a fence with a loose board, which, pushed aside, revealed a
+hole where-through a very small boy might squeeze; and within were
+stored many barrows and shallows, mostly broken, and of these one,
+tilted forward and bottom up, made a hut or den, screened about with
+fence and barrows. Here they hid while the Learys swept the Jago, and
+hence they issued from time to time to pound such youngsters of the
+other side as might come in sight. The bits of iron railing made
+imposing weapons, but were a trifle too big and heavy for rapid use in
+their puny hands. Still, Dicky managed to double up little Billy Leary
+with a timely lunge in the stomach, and Tommy Rann made Bobby Harnwell's
+nose bleed very satisfactorily. On the other hand, the bump on Tommy
+Rann's forehead was widened by the visitation of a stick, and Dicky
+Perrott sustained a very hopeful punch in the eye, which he cherished
+enthusiastically with a view to an honourable blackness. In the snuggery
+intervals they explained their prowess one to another, and Dicky alluded
+to his intention, when he was a man, to buy a very long sword wherewith
+to cut off the Learys' heads: Tommy Rann inclining, however, to a gun,
+with which one might also shoot birds.
+
+The battle flagged a little toward mid-day, but waxed lively again as
+the afternoon began. It was then that Dicky Perrott, venturing some way
+from the retreat, found himself in a scrimmage, and a man snatched away
+his piece of iron and floored a Leary with it. Gratifying as was the
+distinction of aiding in the exploit, Dicky mourned the loss of the
+weapon almost unto tears, and Tommy Rann would not go turn-about with
+the other, but kept it wholly for himself; so Dicky was fain to hunt
+sorrowfully for a mere stick. Even a disengaged stick was not easy to
+find just then. So Dicky, emerging from the Jago, tried Meakin Street,
+where there were shops, but unsuccessfully, and so came round by Luck
+Row, a narrow way from Meakin Street by Walker's cook shop, up through
+the Jago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dicky's mother, left with the baby, fastened the door as well as she
+might, and trembled. Indeed she had reason. The time of Josh Perrott's
+return was a matter of doubt, but when he did come he would want
+something to eat; it was for that he had left the money. But Dicky was
+out, and there was nothing in the cupboard. From the window she saw
+divers fights in Jago Court; and a man lay for near two hours on the
+stones with a cut on his temple. As for herself, she was no favourite in
+the neighbourhood at any time. For one thing, her husband did not carry
+the cosh. Then she was an alien who had never entirely fallen into Jago
+ways; she had soon grown sluttish and dirty, but she was never drunk,
+she never quarrelled, she did not gossip freely. Also her husband beat
+her but rarely, and then not with a chair nor a poker. Justly irritated
+by such superiorities as these, the women of the Jago were ill-disposed
+to brook another: which was, that Hannah Perrott had been married in
+church. For these reasons she was timid at the most peaceful of times,
+but now, with Ranns and Learys on the war-path, and herself obnoxious to
+both, she trembled. She wished Dicky would come and do her errand. But
+there was no sign of him, and mid-day wore into afternoon. It was late
+for Josh as it was, and he would be sure to come home irritable: it was
+his way when a bad head from overnight struggled with morning beer. If
+he found nothing to eat there would be trouble.
+
+At length she resolved to go herself. There was a lull in the outer din,
+and what there was seemed to come from the farther parts of Honey Lane
+and Jago Row. She would slip across by Luck Row to Meakin Street and be
+back in five minutes. She took up little Looey and went.
+
+And as Dicky, stickless, turned into Luck Row, there arose a loud shriek
+and then another, and then in a changed voice a succession of long
+screams with a regular breath-pause. Sally Green again! He ran, turned
+into Old Jago Street, and saw.
+
+Sprawled on her face in the foul road lay a writhing woman and screamed;
+while squeezed under her arm was a baby with mud in its eyes and a cut
+cheek, crying weakly; and spread over all, clutching her prey by hair
+and wrist, Sally Green hung on the nape like a terrier, jaws clenched,
+head shaking.
+
+Thus Dicky saw it in a flash, and in an instant he had flung himself on
+Sally Green, kicking, striking, biting and crying, for he had seen his
+mother and Looey. The kicks wasted themselves among the woman's
+petticoats, and the blows were feeble; but the sharp teeth were meeting
+in the shoulder-flesh, when help came.
+
+Norah Walsh, vanquished champion, now somewhat recovered, looked from a
+window, saw her enemy vulnerable, and ran out armed with a bottle. She
+stopped at the kerb to knock the bottom off the bottle, and then, with
+an exultant shout, seized Sally Green by the hair and stabbed her about
+the face with the jagged points. Blinded with blood, Sally released her
+hold on Mrs Perrott and rolled on her back, struggling fiercely; but to
+no end, for Norah Walsh, kneeling on her breast, stabbed and stabbed
+again, till pieces of the bottle broke away. Sally's yells and plunges
+ceased, and a man pulled Norah off. On him she turned, and he was fain
+to run, while certain Learys found a truck which might carry Sally to
+the hospital.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hannah Perrott was gone indoors, hysterical and helpless. She had scarce
+crossed the street on her errand when she had met Sally Green in quest
+of female Ranns. Mrs Perrott was not a Rann, but she was not a Leary, so
+it came to the same thing. Moreover, there was her general
+obnoxiousness. She had tried to run, but that was useless; and now,
+sobbing and bleeding, she was merely conscious of being gently led,
+almost carried, indoors and upstairs. She was laid back on the bed, and
+somebody loosened her hair and wiped her face and neck, giving her
+hoarse, comforting words. Then she saw the face--scared though coarse
+and pitted, and red about the eyes--that bent over her. It was Pigeony
+Poll's.
+
+Dicky had followed her in, no longer the hero of the Jago Row retreat,
+but with his face tearful and distorted, carrying the baby in his arms,
+and wiping the mud from her eyes. Now he sat on the little box and
+continued his ministrations, with fear in his looks as he glanced at his
+mother on the bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Without, the fight rallied once more. The Learys ran to avenge Sally
+Green, and the Ranns met them with a will. Down by the Bag of Nails a
+party of Ranns was driven between the posts and through the gut into
+Shoreditch High Street, where a stand was made until Fag Dawson dropped,
+with a shoemaker's knife sticking under his arm-pit. Then the Ranns
+left, with most of the Learys after them, and Fag Dawson was carried to
+a chemist's by the police, never to floor a Rann again. For he was
+chived in the left lung.
+
+Thus the fight ended. For a faction fight in the Jago, with a few broken
+heads and ribs and an odd knife wound here and there--even with a death
+in the hospital from kicks or what not--was all very well; but when it
+came to homicide in the open High Street, the police drew the line, and
+entered the Jago in force. Ordinarily, a peep now and again from a
+couple of policemen between the 'Posties' was all the supervision the
+Jago had, although three policemen had been seen to walk the length of
+Old Jago Street together, and there were raids in force for special
+captures. There was a raid in force now, and the turmoil ceased. Nothing
+would have pleased both Ranns and Learys better than to knock over two
+or three policemen, for kicking-practice; but there were too many for
+the sport, and for hours they patrolled the Jago's closest passages. Of
+course nobody knew who chived Fag Dawson. No inquiring policeman ever
+found anybody in the Old Jago who knew anything, even to the harm of
+his bitterest foe. It was the sole commandment that ran there:--'Thou
+shalt not nark.'
+
+That night it was known that there would be a fight between Josh Perrott
+and Billy Leary, once the latter grew well. For Josh Perrott came home,
+saw his wife, and turned Rann on the spot. But for the police in the
+Jago that night, there would have been many a sore head, if no worse,
+among the Learys, by visitation of Josh Perrott. Sally Green's husband
+had fled years ago, and Billy Leary, her brother, was the obvious mark
+for Josh's vengeance. He was near as eminent a fighter among the men as
+his sister among the women, and a charming scrap was anticipated. It
+would come off, of course, in Jago Court one Sunday morning, as all
+fights of distinction did; and perhaps somebody in the High Mob would
+put up stakes.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+In the morning the police still held the Jago. Their presence
+embarrassed many, but none more than Dicky Perrott, who would always
+take a turning, or walk the other way, at sight of a policeman. Dicky
+got out of Old Jago Street early, and betook him to Meakin Street, where
+there were chandlers' shops with sugar in their windows, and cook-shops
+with pudding. He designed working through by these to Shoreditch High
+Street, there to crown his solace by contemplation of the cake-shop.
+But, as he neared Weech's coffee-shop, scarce half through Meakin
+Street, there stood Weech himself at the door, grinning and nodding
+affably, and beckoning him. He was a pleasant man, this Mr Aaron Weech,
+who sang hymns aloud in the back parlour, and hummed the tunes in the
+shop: a prosperous, white-aproned, whiskered, half-bald, smirking
+tradesman, who bent and spoke amiably to boys, looking sharply in their
+eyes, but talked to a man mostly with his gaze on the man's waistcoat.
+
+Indeed, there seemed to be something about Mr Aaron Weech especially
+attractive to youth. Nearly all his customers were boys and girls,
+though not boys and girls who looked likely to pay a great deal in the
+way of refreshment, much as they took. But he was ever indulgent, and at
+all times accessible to his young clients. Even on Sunday (though, of
+course, his shutters were kept rigidly up on the Day of Rest) a
+particular tap would bring him hot-foot to the door: not to sell coffee,
+for Mr Weech was no Sabbath-breaker.
+
+Now he stood at his door, and invited Dicky with nods and becks. Dicky,
+all wondering, and alert to dodge in case the thing were a mere device
+to bring him within striking distance, went.
+
+'W'y Dicky Perrott,' quoth Mr Weech in a tone of genial surprise, 'I
+b'lieve you could drink a cup o' cawfy!'
+
+Dicky, wondering how Mr Weech had learnt his name, believed he could.
+
+'An' eat a slice o' cake too, I'll be bound,' Mr Weech added.
+
+Dicky's glance leapt. Yes, he could eat a slice of cake too.
+
+'Ah, I knew it,' said Mr Weech, triumphantly; 'I can always tell.' He
+rubbed Dicky's cap about his head, and drew him into the shop, at this
+hour bare of customers. At the innermost compartment they stopped, and
+Mr Weech, with a gentle pressure on the shoulders, seated Dicky at the
+table.
+
+He brought the coffee, and not a single slice of cake, but two. True, it
+was not cake of Elevation Mission quality, nor was it so good as that
+shown at the shop in High Street: it was of a browner, dumpier, harder
+nature, and the currants were gritty and few. But cake it was, and to
+consider it critically were unworthy. Dicky bolted it with less comfort
+than he might, for Mr Weech watched him keenly across the table. And,
+indeed, from some queer cause, he felt an odd impulse to cry. It was
+the first time that he had ever been given anything, kindly and
+ungrudgingly.
+
+He swallowed the last crumb, washed it down with the dregs of his cup,
+and looked sheepishly across at Mr Weech.
+
+'Goes down awright, don't it?' that benefactor remarked. 'Ah, I like to
+see you enjoyin' of yerself. I'm very fond o' you young 'uns: 'specially
+clever 'uns like you.'
+
+Dicky had never been called clever before, so far as he could recollect,
+and he wondered at it now. Mr Weech, leaning back, contemplated him
+smilingly for some seconds, and then proceeded. 'Yus,' he said, 'you're
+the sort o' boy as can 'ave cawfy and cake w'enever you want it, you
+are.'
+
+Dicky wondered more, and his face said as much. 'You know,' Mr Weech
+pursued, winking again, grinning and nodding. 'That was a fine watch you
+found the other day. Y'ought to 'a' brought it to me.'
+
+Dicky was alarmed. How did Mr Weech learn about the watch? Perhaps he
+was a friend of the funny old man who lost it. Dicky half rose, but his
+affable patron leaned across and pushed him back on the seat. 'You
+needn't be frightened,' he said. 'I ain't goin' to say nothink to
+nobody. But I know all about it, mind, an' I could if I liked. You found
+the watch, an' it was a red 'un, on a bit o' ribbin. Well, then you went
+and took it 'ome, like a little fool. Wot does yer father do? W'y 'e ups
+an' lathers you with 'is belt, an' 'e keeps the watch 'isself. That's
+all you git for yer pains. See--I know all about it.' And Mr Weech gazed
+on Dicky Perrott with a fixed grin.
+
+''Oo toldjer?' Dicky managed to ask at last.
+
+'Ah!'--this with a great emphasis and a tapping of the forefinger beside
+the nose--'I don't want much tellin': it ain't much as goes on 'ereabout
+I don't know of. Never mind 'ow. P'raps I got a little bird as
+w'ispers--p'raps I do it some other way. Any'ow I know. It ain't no good
+any boy tryin' to do somethink unbeknownst to me, mindjer.'
+
+Mr Weech's head lay aside, his grin widened, his glance was sidelong,
+his forefinger pointed from his temple over Dicky's head, and
+altogether he looked so very knowing that Dicky shuffled in his seat. By
+what mysterious means was this new-found friend so well informed? The
+doubt troubled him, for Dicky knew nothing of Mr Aaron Weech's
+conversation, an hour before, with Tommy Rann.
+
+'But it's awright, bless yer,' Mr Weech went on presently. 'Nobody's
+none the wuss for me knowin' about 'em.... Well, we was a-talkin' about
+the watch, wasn't we? All you got after sich a lot o' trouble was a
+woppin' with a belt. That was too bad.' Mr Weech's voice was piteous and
+sympathetic. 'After you a-findin' sich a nice watch--a red 'un an'
+all!--you gits nothink for yerself but a beltin'. Never mind, you'll do
+better next time--I'll take care o' that. I don't like to see a clever
+boy put upon. You go an' find another, or somethink else--anythink
+good--an' then you bring it 'ere.'
+
+Mr Weech's friendly sympathy extinguished Dicky's doubt. 'I didn't find
+it,' he said, shy but proud. 'It was a click--I sneaked it.'
+
+'Eh?' ejaculated Mr Weech, a sudden picture of blank incomprehension.
+'Eh? What? Click? Wot's a click? Sneaked? Wot's that? I dunno nothink
+about no talk o' that sort, an' I don't want to. It's my belief it means
+somethink wrong--but I dunno, an' I don't want to. 'Ear that? Eh? Don't
+let me 'ave no more o' that, or you'd better not come near me agin. If
+you _find_ somethink, awright: you come to me an' I'll give ye somethink
+for it, if it's any good. It ain't no business of anybody's _where_ you
+find it, o' course, an' I don't want to know. But clicks and
+sneaks--them's Greek to me, an' I don't want to learn 'em. Unnerstand
+that? Nice talk to respectable people, with yer clicks an' sneaks!'
+
+Dicky blushed a little, and felt very guilty without in the least
+understanding the offence. But Mr Weech's virtuous indignation subsided
+as quickly as it had arisen, and he went on as amiably as ever.
+
+'When you _find_ anythink,' he said, 'jist like you found that watch,
+don't tell nobody, an' don't let nobody see it. Bring it 'ere quiet,
+when there ain't any p'liceman in the street, an' come right through to
+the back o' the shop, an' say, "I come to clean the knives." Unnerstand?
+"I come to clean the knives." There ain't no knives to clean--it's on'y
+a way o' tellin' me you got somethink without other people knowin'. An'
+then I'll give you somethink for it--money p'raps, or p'raps cake or wot
+not. Don't forgit. "I come to clean the knives." See?'
+
+Yes, Dicky understood perfectly; and Dicky saw a new world of dazzling
+delights. Cake--limitless cake, coffee, and the like whenever he might
+feel moved thereunto; but more than all, money--actual money. Good broad
+pennies, perhaps whole shillings--perhaps even more still: money to buy
+bullock's liver for dinner, or tripe, or what you fancied: saveloys,
+baked potatoes from the can on cold nights, a little cart to wheel Looey
+in, a boat from a toy-shop with sails!
+
+'There's no end o' things to be found all over the place, an' a sharp
+boy like you can find 'em every day. If you don't find 'em, someone
+else will; there's plenty on 'em about on the look-out, an' you got jist
+as much right as them. On'y mind!'--Mr Weech was suddenly stern and
+serious, and his forefinger was raised impressively--'you know you can't
+do anythink without I know, an' if you say a word--if you say a word,'
+his fist came on the table with a bang, 'somethink 'll happen to you.
+Somethink bad.'
+
+Mr Weech rose, and was pleasant again, though business-like. 'Now, you
+just go an' find somethink,' he said. 'Look sharp about it, an' don't go
+an' git in trouble. The cawfy's a penny, an' the cake's a penny--ought
+prop'ly to be twopence, but say a penny this time. That's twopence you
+owe me, an' you better bring somethink an' pay it off quick. So go
+along.'
+
+This was an unforeseen tag to the entertainment. For the first time in
+his life Dicky was in debt. It was a little disappointing to find the
+coffee and cake no gift after all: though, indeed, it now seemed foolish
+to have supposed they were; for in Dicky Perrott's world people did not
+give things away--that were the act of a fool. Thus Dicky, with his
+hands in his broken pockets, and thought in his small face, whereon
+still stood the muddy streaks of yesterday's tears, trudged out of Mr
+Aaron Weech's shop-door, and along Meakin Street.
+
+Now he was beginning the world seriously, and must face the fact. Truly
+the world had been serious enough for him hitherto, but that he knew
+not. Now he was of an age when most boys were thieving for themselves,
+and he owed money like a man. True it was, as Mr Weech had said, that
+everybody--the whole Jago--was on the look-out for himself. Plainly he
+must take his share, lest it fall to others. As to the old gentleman's
+watch, he had but been beforehand. Through foolish ingenuousness he had
+lost it, and his father had got it, who could so much more easily steal
+one for himself; for he was a strong man, and had but to knock over
+another man at any night-time. Nobody should hear of future clicks but
+Mr Weech. Each for himself? Come, he must open his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+There was no chance all along Meakin Street. The chandlers and the
+keepers of cook-shops knew their neighbourhood too well to leave
+articles unguarded. Soon Dicky reached Shoreditch High Street. There
+things were a little more favourable. There were shops, as he well
+remembered, where goods were sometimes exhibited at the doors and
+outside the windows; but to-day there seemed to be no chance of the
+sort. As for the people, he was too short to try pockets, and indeed the
+High Street rarely gave passage to a more unpromising lot. Moreover,
+from robbery from the person he knew he must abstain, except for such
+uncommon opportunities as that of the Bishop's watch, for some years
+yet.
+
+He hung about the doors and windows of shop after shop, hoping for a
+temporary absence of the shop-keeper, which might leave something
+snatchable. But he hoped in vain. From most shops he was driven away,
+for the Shoreditch trader is not slow to judge the purpose of a
+loitering boy. So he passed nearly two hours: when at last he saw his
+chance. It came in an advantageous part of High Street, not far from the
+'Posties,' though on the opposite side of the way. A nurse-girl had left
+a perambulator at a shop door, while she bought inside, and on the
+perambulator lay loose a little skin rug, from under which a little fat
+leg stuck and waved aloft. Dicky set his back to the shop, and sidled to
+within reach of the perambulator. But it chanced that at this moment the
+nurse-girl stepped to the door, and she made a snatch at his arm as he
+lifted the rug. This he dropped at once, and was swinging leisurely away
+(for he despised the chase of any nurse-girl) when a man took him
+suddenly by the shoulder. Quick as a weasel, Dicky ducked under the
+man's arm, pulled his shoulder clear, dropped forward and rested an
+instant on the tips of his fingers to avoid the catch of the other hand,
+and shot out into the road. The man tried to follow, but Dicky ran under
+the belly of a standing horse, under the head of another that trotted,
+across the fore-platform of a tramcar--behind the driver's back--and so
+over to the 'Posties.'
+
+He slouched into the Jago, disappointed. As he crossed Edge Lane, he was
+surprised to perceive a stranger--a toff, indeed--who walked slowly
+along, looking up right and left at the grimy habitations about him. He
+wore a tall hat, and his clothes were black, and of a pattern that Dicky
+remembered to have seen at the Elevation Mission. They were, in fact,
+the clothes of a clergyman. For himself, he was tall and soundly built,
+with a certain square muscularity of face, and of age about thirty-five.
+He had ventured into the Jago because the police were in possession,
+Dicky thought; and wondered in what plight he would leave, had he come
+at another time. But losing view of the stranger, and making his way
+along Old Jago Street, Dicky perceived that indeed the police were
+gone, and that the Jago was free.
+
+He climbed the broken stairs and pushed into the first-floor back,
+hopeful, though more doubtful, of dinner. There was none. His mother,
+tied about the neck with rags, lay across the bed nursing the damage of
+yesterday, and commiserating herself. A yard from her lay Looey, sick
+and ailing in a new way, but disregarded. Dicky moved to lift her, but
+at that she cried the more, and he was fain to let her lie. She rolled
+her head from side to side, and raised her thin little hand vaguely
+toward it, with feverishly working fingers. Dicky felt her head and she
+screamed again. There was a lump at the side, a hard, sharp lump; got
+from the stones of the roadway yesterday. And there was a curious
+quality, a rather fearful quality, in the little wails: uneasily
+suggestive of the screams of Sally Green's victims.
+
+Father was out, prowling. There was nothing eatable in the cupboard, and
+there seemed nothing at home worth staying for. He took another look at
+Looey, but refrained from touching her, and went out.
+
+The opposite door on the landing was wide open, and he could hear nobody
+in the room. He had never seen this door open before, and now he
+ventured on a peep: for the tenants of the front room were strangers,
+late arrivals, and interlopers. Their name was Roper. Roper was a pale
+cabinet-maker, fallen on evil times and out of work. He had a pale wife,
+disliked because of her neatly-kept clothes, her exceeding use of soap
+and water, her aloofness from gossip. She had a deadly pale baby; also
+there was a pale hunchbacked boy of near Dicky's age. Collectively the
+Ropers were disliked as strangers: because they furnished their own
+room, and in an obnoxiously complete style; because Roper did not drink,
+nor brawl, nor beat his wife, nor do anything all day but look for work;
+because all these things were a matter of scandalous arrogance,
+impudently subversive of Jago custom and precedent. Mrs Perrott was bad
+enough, but such people as these!...
+
+Dicky had never before seen quite such a room as this. Everything was so
+clean: the floor, the windows, the bed-clothes. Also there was a strip
+of old carpet on the floor. There were two perfectly sound chairs; and
+two pink glass vases on the mantel-piece; and a clock. Nobody was in the
+room, and Dicky took a step farther. The clock attracted him again. It
+was a small, cheap, nickel-plated, cylindrical thing, of American make,
+and it reminded him at once of the Bishop's watch. It was not gold,
+certainly, but it was a good deal bigger, and it could go--it was going.
+Dicky stepped back and glanced at the landing. Then he darted into the
+room, whipped the clock under the breast of the big jacket, and went for
+the stairs.
+
+Half way down he met the pale hunchback ascending. Left at home alone,
+he had been standing in the front doorway. He saw Dicky's haste, saw
+also the suspicious bulge under his jacket, and straightway seized
+Dicky's arm. 'Where 'a' you bin?' he asked sharply. 'Bin in our room?
+What you got there?'
+
+'Nothin' o' yours, 'ump. Git out o' that!' Dicky pushed him aside. 'If
+you don't le' go I'll corpse ye!'
+
+But one arm and hand was occupied with the bulge, and the other was for
+the moment unequal to the work of driving off the assailant. The two
+children wrangled and struggled downstairs, through the doorway and into
+the street: the hunchback weak, but infuriate, buffeting, biting and
+whimpering; Dicky infuriate too, but alert for a chance to break away
+and run. So they scrambled together across the street, Dicky dragging
+away from the house at every step; and just at the corner of Luck Row,
+getting his fore-arm across the other's face, he back-heeled him, and
+the little hunchback fell heavily, and lay breathless and sobbing, while
+Dicky scampered through Luck Row and round the corner into Meakin
+Street.
+
+Mr Weech was busier now, for there were customers. But Dicky and his
+bulge he saw ere they were well over the threshold.
+
+'Ah yus, Dicky,' he said, coming to meet him. 'I was expectin' you. Come
+in--
+
+    _In the swe-e-et by an' by,
+    We shall meet on that beautiful shaw-er!_
+
+Come in 'ere.' And still humming his hymn, he led Dicky into the shop
+parlour.
+
+Here Dicky produced the clock, which Mr Weech surveyed with no great
+approval. 'You'll 'ave to try an' do better than this, you know,' he
+said. 'But any'ow 'ere it is, sich as it is. It about clears auf wot you
+owe, I reckon. Want some dinner?'
+
+This was a fact, and Dicky admitted it.
+
+'Awright--
+
+    _In the swe-e-e-t by an' by_,--
+
+come out an' set down. I'll bring you somethink 'ot.'
+
+This proved to be a very salt bloater, a cup of the usual muddy coffee,
+tasting of burnt toast, and a bit of bread: afterwards supplemented by a
+slice of cake. This to Dicky was a banquet. Moreover, there was the
+adult dignity of taking your dinner in a coffee-shop, which Dicky
+supported indomitably now that he began to feel at ease in Mr Weech's:
+leaning back in his seat, swinging his feet, and looking about at the
+walls with the grocers' almanacks hanging thereto, and the Sunday School
+Anniversary bills of past date, gathered from afar to signalise the
+elevated morals of the establishment.
+
+'Done?' queried Mr Weech in his ear. 'Awright, don't 'ang about 'ere
+then. Bloater's a penny, bread a 'a'peny, cawfy a penny, cake a penny.
+You'll owe thrippence a'peny now.'
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+When Dicky Perrott and the small hunchback were hauling and struggling
+across the street, Old Fisher came down from the top-floor back, wherein
+he dwelt with his son Bob, Bob's wife and two sisters, and five
+children: an apartment in no way so clean as the united efforts of ten
+people might be expected to have made it. Old Fisher, on whose grimy
+face the wrinkles were deposits of mud, stopped at the open door on the
+first floor, and, as Dicky had done, he took a peep. Perplexed at the
+monstrous absence of dirt, and encouraged by the stillness, Old Fisher
+also ventured within. Nobody was in charge, and Old Fisher, mentally
+pricing the pink glass vases at threepence, made for a small chest in
+the corner of the room, and lifted the lid. Within lay many of Roper's
+tools, from among which he had that morning taken such as he might want
+on an emergent call to work, to carry as he tramped Curtain Road.
+Clearly these were the most valuable things in the place; and, slipping
+a few small articles into his pockets, Old Fisher took a good double
+handful of the larger, and tramped upstairs with them. Presently he
+returned with Bob's missis, and together they started with more. As they
+emerged, however, there on the landing stood the little hunchback,
+sobbing and smearing his face with his sleeve. At sight of this new
+pillage he burst into sharp wails, standing impotent on the landing, his
+streaming eyes following the man and woman ascending before him. Old
+Fisher, behind, stumped the stairs with a clumsy affectation of
+absent-mindedness; the woman, in front, looked down, merely indifferent.
+Scarce were they vanished above, however, when the little hunchback
+heard his father and mother on the lower stairs.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Dicky came moodily back from his dinner at Mr Weech's, plunged in
+mystified computation: starting with a debt of twopence, he had paid Mr
+Weech an excellent clock--a luxurious article in Dicky's eyes--had eaten
+a bloater, and had emerged from the transaction owing threepence
+halfpenny. Of what such a clock cost he had no notion, though he felt it
+must be some inconceivable sum. As Mr Weech put it, the adjustment of
+accounts would seem to be quite correct; but the broad fact that all had
+ended in increasing his debt by three half-pence, remained and perplexed
+him. He remembered having seen such clocks in a shop in Norton Folgate.
+To ask the price, in person, were but to be chased out of the shop; but
+they were probably ticketed, and perhaps he might ask some bystander to
+read the ticket. This brought the reflection that, after all, reading
+was a useful accomplishment on occasion: though a matter of too much
+time and trouble to be worth while. Dicky had never been to school; for
+the Elementary Education Act ran in the Jago no more than any other Act
+of Parliament. There was a Board School, truly, away out of the Jago
+bounds, by the corner of Honey Lane, where children might go free, and
+where some few Jago children did go now and again, when boots were to be
+given away, or when tickets were to be had, for tea, or soup, or the
+like. But most parents were of Josh Perrott's opinion: that school-going
+was a practice best never begun; for then the child was never heard of,
+and there was no chance of inquiries or such trouble. Not that any such
+inquiries were common in the Jago, or led to anything.
+
+Meantime Dicky, minded to know if his adventure had made any stir in the
+house, carried his way deviously toward home. Working through the parts
+beyond Jago Row, he fetched round into Honey Lane, so coming at New
+Jago Street from the farther side. Choosing one of the houses whose
+backs gave on Jago Court, he slipped through the passage, and so, by the
+back yard, crawled through the broken fence into the court. Left and
+right were the fronts of houses, four a side. Before him, to the right
+of the narrow archway leading to Old Jago Street, was the window of his
+own home. He gained the back yard quietly, and at the kitchen door met
+Tommy Rann.
+
+'Come on,' called Tommy. ''Ere's a barney! They're a-pitchin' into them
+noo 'uns--Roperses. Roperses sez Fisherses is sneaked their things. They
+_are_ a-gittin' of it!'
+
+From the stairs, indeed, came shouts and curses, bumps and sobs and
+cries. The first landing and half the stairs were full of people, men
+and women, Ranns and Learys together. When Ranns joined Learys it was an
+ill time for them they marched against; and never were they so ready and
+so anxious to combine as after a fight between themselves, were but some
+common object of attack available. Here it was. Here were these
+pestilent outsiders, the Ropers, assailing the reputation of the
+neighbourhood by complaining of being robbed. As though their mere
+presence in the Jago, with their furniture and their superiority, were
+not obnoxious enough: they must turn about and call their neighbours
+thieves! They had been tolerated too long already. They should now be
+given something for themselves, and have some of their exasperating
+respectability knocked off; and if, in the confusion, their portable
+articles of furniture and bed-clothing found their way into more
+deserving hands--why, serve them right.
+
+The requisite volleys of preliminary abuse having been discharged, more
+active operations began under cover of fresh volleys. Dicky, with Tommy
+Rann behind him, struggled up the stairs among legs and skirts, and saw
+that the Ropers, the man flushed, but the woman paler than ever, were
+striving to shut their door. Within, the hunchback and the baby cried,
+and without, those on the landing, skidding the door with their feet,
+pushed inward, and now began to strike and maul. Somebody seized the
+man's wrist, and Norah Walsh got the woman by the hair and dragged her
+head down. In a peep through the scuffle Dicky saw her face, ashen and
+sweat-beaded, in the jamb of the door, and saw Norah Walsh's red fist
+beat into it twice. Then somebody came striding up the stairs, and Dicky
+was pushed farther back. Over the shoulders of those about him, Dicky
+saw a tall hat, and then the head beneath it. It was the stranger he had
+seen in Edge Lane--the parson: active and resolute. Norah Walsh he took
+by the shoulder, and flung back among the others, and as he turned on
+him, the man who held Roper's wrist released it and backed off.
+
+'What is this?' demanded the new-comer, stern and hard of face. 'What is
+all this?' He bent his frown on one and another about him, and, as he
+did it, some shrank uneasily, and on the faces of others fell the blank
+lack of expression that was wont to meet police inquiries in the Jago.
+Dicky looked to see this man beaten down, kicked and stripped. But a
+well-dressed stranger was so new a thing in the Jago, this one had
+dropped among them so suddenly, and he had withal so bold a confidence,
+that the Jagos stood irresolute. A toff was not a person to be attacked
+without due consideration. After such a person there were apt to be
+inquiries, with money to back them, and vengeance sharp and certain: the
+thing, indeed, was commonly thought too risky. And this man, so
+unflinchingly confident, must needs have reason for it. He might have
+the police at instant call--they might be back in the Jago at the
+moment. And he flung them back, commanded them, cowed them with his
+hard, intelligent eyes, like a tamer among beasts.
+
+'Understand this, now,' he went on, with a sharp tap of his stick on the
+floor. 'This is a sort of thing I will _not_ tolerate in my parish--in
+this parish: nor in any other place where I may meet it. Go away, and
+try to be ashamed of yourselves--go. Go, all of you, I say, to your own
+homes: I shall come there and talk to you again soon. Go along, Sam
+Cash--you've a broken head already, I see. Take it away: I shall come
+and see you too.'
+
+Those on the stairs had melted away like punished school-children. Most
+of the others, after a moment of averted face and muttered justification
+one to another, were dragging their feet, each with a hang-dog pretence
+of sauntering airily off from some sight no longer interesting. Sam
+Cash, who had already seen the stranger in the street, and was thus
+perhaps a trifle less startled than the others at his advent, stood,
+however, with some assumption of virtuous impudence, till amazed by
+sudden address in his own name: whereat, clean discomfited, he
+ignominiously turned tail and sneaked downstairs in meaner case than the
+rest. How should this strange parson know him, and know his name?
+Plainly he must be connected with the police. He had brought out the
+name as pat as you please. So argued Sam Cash with his fellows in the
+outer street: never recalling that Jerry Gullen had called aloud to him
+by name, when first he observed the parson in the street; had called to
+him, indeed, to haste to the bashing of the Ropers; and thus had first
+given the stranger notice of the proceeding. But it was the way of the
+Jago that its mean cunning saw a mystery and a terror where simple
+intelligence saw there was none.
+
+As the crowd began to break up, Dicky pushed his own door a little open
+behind him, and there stood on his own ground, as the others cleared
+off; and the hunchback ventured a peep from behind his swooning mother.
+'There y'are, that's 'im!' he shouted, pointing at Dicky. ''E begun it!
+'E took the clock!' Dicky instantly dropped behind his door, and shut it
+fast.
+
+The invaders had all gone--the Fishers had made upstairs in the
+beginning--before the parson turned and entered the Ropers' room. In
+five minutes he emerged and strode upstairs: whence he returned, after a
+still shorter interval, herding before him Old Fisher and Bob Fisher's
+missis, sulky and reluctant, carrying tools.
+
+And thus it was that the Reverend Henry Sturt first addressed his
+parishioners. The parish, besides the Jago, comprised Meakin Street and
+some small way beyond, and it was to this less savage district that his
+predecessor had confined his attention: preaching every Sunday in a
+stable, in an alley behind a disused shop, and distributing loaves and
+sixpences to the old women who attended regularly on that account. For
+to go into the Jago were for him mere wasted effort. And so, indeed, the
+matter had been since the parish came into being.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+When Dicky retreated from the landing and shut the door behind him, he
+slipped the bolt, a strong one, put there by Josh Perrott himself,
+possibly as an accessory to escape by the window in some possible
+desperate pass. For a little he listened, but no sound hinted of attack
+from without, and he turned to his mother.
+
+Josh Perrott had been out since early morning, and Dicky, too, had done
+no more than look in for a moment in search of dinner. Hannah Perrott,
+grown tired of self commiseration, felt herself neglected and
+aggrieved--slighted in her state of invalid privilege. So she
+transferred some of her pity from her sore neck to her desolate
+condition as misprized wife and mother, and the better to feel it,
+proceeded to martyrise herself, with melancholy pleasure, by a
+nerveless show of 'setting to rights' in the room--a domestic novelty,
+perfunctory as it was. Looey, still restless and weeping, she left on
+the bed, for, being neglected herself, it was not her mood to tend the
+baby; she would aggravate the relish of her sorrows in her own way.
+Besides, Looey had been given something to eat a long time ago, and had
+not eaten it yet: with her there was nothing else to do. So that now, as
+she dragged a rag along the grease-strewn mantel-piece, Mrs Perrott
+greeted Dicky:--'There y'are, Dicky, comin' 'inderin' 'ere jest when I'm
+a-puttin' things to rights.' And she sighed with the weight of another
+grievance.
+
+Looey lay on her back, faintly and vainly struggling to turn her fearful
+little face from the light. Clutched in her little fist was the unclean
+stump of bread she had held for hours. Dicky plucked a soft piece and
+essayed to feed her with it, but the dry little mouth rejected the
+morsel, and the head turned feverishly from side to side to the sound of
+that novel cry. She was hot wherever Dicky touched her, and presently
+he said:--'Mother, I b'lieve Looey's queer. I think she wants some
+med'cine.'
+
+His mother shook her head peevishly. 'O, you an' Looey's a noosance,'
+she said. 'A lot you care about _me_ bein' queer, you an' yer father
+too, leavin' me all alone like this, an' me feelin' ready to drop, an'
+got the room to do an' all. I wish you'd go away an' stop 'inderin' of
+me like this.'
+
+Dicky took but another look at Looey, and then slouched out. The landing
+was clear, and the Ropers' door was shut. He wondered what had become of
+the stranger with the tall hat--whether he was in the Ropers' room or
+not. The thought hurried him, for he feared to have that stranger asking
+him questions about the clock. He got out into the street, thoughtful.
+He had some compunctions in the matter of that clock, now. Not that he
+could in any reasonable way blame himself. There the clock had stood at
+his mercy, and by all Jago custom and ethic it was his if only he could
+get clear away with it. This he had done, and he had no more concern in
+the business, strictly speaking. Nevertheless, since he had seen the
+woman's face in the jamb of the door, he felt a sort of pity for
+her--that she should have lost her clock. No doubt she had enjoyed its
+possession, as, indeed, he would have enjoyed it himself, had he not had
+to take it instantly to Mr Weech. And his fancy wandered off in
+meditation of what he would do with a clock of his own. To begin with,
+of course, he would open it, and discover the secret of its works and
+its ticking: perhaps thereby discovering how to make a clock himself.
+Also he would frequently wind it up, and he would show the inside to
+Looey, in confidence. It would stand on the mantel-piece, and raise the
+social position of the family. People would come respectfully to ask the
+time, and he would tell them, with an air. Yes, certainly a clock must
+stand eminent among the things he would buy, when he had plenty of
+money. He must look out for more clicks: the one way to riches.
+
+As to the Ropers, again. Bad it must be, indeed, to be deprived suddenly
+of a clock, after long experience of the joys it brought; and Norah
+Walsh had punched the woman in the face, and clawed her hair, and the
+woman could not fight. Dicky was sorry for her, and straightway resolved
+to give her another clock, or, if not a clock, something that would
+please her as much. He had acquired a clock in the morning; why not
+another in the afternoon? Failing a clock, he would try for something
+else, and the Ropers should have it. The resolve gave Dicky a virtuous
+exaltation of spirit, the reward of the philanthropist.
+
+Again he began the prowl after likely plunder that was to be his daily
+industry. Meakin Street he did not try. The chandlers' and the
+cook-shops held nothing that might be counted a consolatory equivalent
+for a clock. Through the 'Posties' he reached Shoreditch High Street at
+once, and started.
+
+This time his movements aroused less suspicion. In the morning he had no
+particular prize in view, and loitered at every shop, waiting his chance
+at anything portable. Now, with a more definite object, he made his
+promenade easily, but without stopping or lounging by shop-fronts. The
+thing, whatsoever it might be, must be small, handsome, and of an
+interesting character--at least as interesting as the clock was. It must
+be small, not merely for facility of concealment and removal--though
+these were main considerations--but because stealthy presentation were
+then the easier. It would have pleased Dicky to hand over his gift
+openly, and to bask in the thanks and the consideration it would
+procure. But he had been accused of stealing the clock, and an open gift
+would savour of admission and peace-offering, whereas in that matter
+stark denial was his plain course.
+
+A roll of print stuff would not do; apples would not do; and fish was
+wide of his purpose. Up one side and down the other side of High Street
+he walked, his eyes instant for suggestion and opportunity. But all in
+vain. Nobody exposed clocks out of doors, and of those within not one
+but an attempt on it were simple madness. And of the things less
+desperate of access nothing was proper to the occasion: all were too
+large, too cheap, or too uninteresting. Oddly, Dicky feared failure
+more than had he been hunting for himself.
+
+He tried farther south, in Norton Folgate. There was a shop of cheap
+second-hand miscellanies: saddles, razors, straps, dumbbells, pistols,
+boxing gloves, trunks, bags, and billiard-balls. Many of the things hung
+about the door-posts in bunches, and within all was black, as in a cave.
+At one door-post was a pistol. Nothing could be more interesting than a
+pistol--indeed it was altogether a better possession than a clock; and
+it was a small, handy sort of thing. Probably the Ropers would be
+delighted with a pistol. He stood and regarded it with much interest.
+There were difficulties. In the first place it was beyond his reach; and
+in the second, it hung by the trigger-guard on a stout cord. Just then,
+glancing within the shop, he perceived a pair of fiery eyes regarding
+him, panther-like, from the inner gloom; and he hastily resumed his
+walk, as the Jew shop-keeper reached the door, and watched him safely
+away.
+
+Now he came to Bishopsgate Street, and here at last he chose the gift.
+It was at a toy-shop: a fine, flaming toy-shop, with carts, dolls, and
+hoops dangling above, and wooden horses standing below, guarding two
+baskets by the door. One contained a mixed assortment of tops, whips,
+boats, and woolly dogs; the other was lavishly filled with shining,
+round metal boxes, nobly decorated with coloured pictures, each box with
+a little cranked handle. As he looked, a tune, delightfully tinkled on
+some instrument, was heard from within the shop. Dicky peeped. There was
+a lady, with a little girl at her side who was looking eagerly at just
+such a shining, round box in the saleswoman's hands, and it was from
+that box, as the saleswoman turned the handle, that the tune came. Dicky
+was enchanted. This--this was the thing, beyond debate: a pretty little
+box that would play music whenever you turned a handle. This was a thing
+worth any fifty clocks. Indeed it was almost as good as a regular
+barrel-organ, the first thing he would buy if he were rich.
+
+There was a shop-boy in charge of the goods outside the window, and his
+eyes were on Dicky. So Dicky whistled absently, and strolled carelessly
+along. He swung behind a large waggon, crossed the road, and sought a
+convenient doorstep; for his mind was made up, and his business was now
+to sit down before the toy-shop, and wait his opportunity.
+
+A shop had been boarded up after a fire, and from its doorstep one could
+command a perfect view of the toy-shop across the broad thoroughfare
+with its crowded traffic--could sit, moreover, safe from interference.
+Here he took his seat, secure from the notice of the guardian shop-boy,
+whose attention was given to passengers on his own side. The little
+girl, gripping the new toy in her hand, came out at her mother's side
+and trotted off. For a moment Dicky reflected that the box could be
+easily snatched. But after all the little girl had but one: whereas the
+shopwoman had many, and at best could play on no more than one at a
+time.
+
+He resumed his watch of the shop-boy, confident that sooner or later a
+chance would come. A woman stopped to ask the price of something, and
+Dicky had half crossed the road ere the boy had begun to answer. But the
+answer was short, and the boy's attention was released too soon.
+
+At last the shopwoman called the boy within, and Dicky darted
+across--not directly, but so as to arrive invisibly at the side next the
+basket of music boxes. A quick glance behind him, a snatch at the box
+with the reddest picture, and a dash into the traffic did it.
+
+The dash would not have been called for but for the sudden re-appearance
+of the shop-boy ere the box had vanished amid the intricacies of Dicky's
+jacket. Dicky was fast, but the boy was little slower, and was,
+moreover, bigger, and stronger on his legs; and Dicky reached the other
+pavement and turned the next corner into Widegate Street, the pursuer
+scarce ten yards behind.
+
+It was now that he first experienced 'hot beef'--which is the Jago idiom
+denoting the plight of one harried by the cry 'Stop thief.' Down
+Widegate Street, across Sandys Row and into Raven Row he ran his best,
+clutching the hem of his jacket and the music box that lay within.
+Crossing Sandys Row a loafing lad shouldered against the shop-boy, and
+Dicky was grateful, for he made it a gain of several yards.
+
+But others had joined in the hunt, and Dicky for the first time began to
+fear. This was a bad day--twice already he had been chased; and now--it
+was bad. He thought little more, for a stunning fear fell upon him: the
+fear of the hunted, that calculates nothing, and is measured by no
+apprehension of consequences. He remembered that he must avoid
+Spitalfields Market, full of men who would stop him; and he knew that in
+many places where a man would be befriended many would make a virtue of
+stopping a boy. To the right along Bell Lane he made an agonised burst
+of speed, and for a while he saw not nor remembered anything; heard no
+more than dreadful shouts drawing nearer his shoulders, felt only the
+fear. But he could not last. Quick enough when fresh, he was tiny and
+ill fed, and now he felt his legs trembling and his wind going.
+Something seemed to beat on the back of his head, till he wondered madly
+if it were the shop-boy with a stick. He turned corners, and chose his
+way by mere instinct, ashen-faced, staring, open-mouthed. How soon would
+he give in, and drop? A street more--half a street--ten yards? Rolling
+and tripping, he turned one last corner and almost fell against a vast,
+fat, unkempt woman whose clothes slid from her shoulders.
+
+''Ere y' are, boy,' said the woman, and flung him by the shoulder
+through the doorway before which she stood.
+
+He was saved at his extremity, for he could never have reached the
+street's end. The woman who had done it (probably she had boys of her
+own on the crook) filled the entrance with her frowsy bulk, and the
+chase straggled past. Dicky caught the stair-post for a moment's
+support, and then staggered out at the back of the house. He gasped, he
+panted, things danced blue before him, but still he clutched his jacket
+hem and the music box lying within. The back door gave on a
+cobble-paved court, with other doors, two coster's barrows, and a few
+dusty fowls. Dicky sat on a step where a door was shut, and rested his
+head against the frame.
+
+The beating in his head grew slower and lighter, and presently he could
+breathe with no fear of choking. He rose and moved off, still panting,
+and feeble in the legs. The court ended in an arched passage, through
+which he gained the street beyond. Here he had but to turn to the left,
+and he was in Brick Lane, and thence all was clear to the Old Jago.
+Regaining his breath and his confidence as he went, he bethought him of
+the Jago Row retreat, where he might examine his prize at leisure,
+embowered amid trucks and barrows. Thither he pushed his way, and soon,
+in the shade of the upturned barrow, he brought out the music box.
+Bright and shiny, it had taken no damage in the flight, though on his
+hands he found scratches, and on his shins bruises, got he knew not how.
+On the top of the box was the picture of a rosy little boy in crimson
+presenting a scarlet nosegay to a rosy little girl in pink, while a red
+brick mansion filled the distance and solidified the composition. The
+brilliant hoop that made the sides (silver, Dicky was convinced) was
+stamped in patterns, and the little brass handle was an irresistible
+temptation. Dicky climbed a truck, and looked about him, peeping from
+beside the loose fence-plank. Then, seeing nobody very near, he muffled
+the box as well as he could in his jacket, and turned the handle.
+
+This was indeed worth all the trouble. _Gently Does the Trick_ was the
+tune, and Dicky, with his head aside and his ear on the bunch of jacket
+that covered the box, listened: his lips parted, his eyes seeking
+illimitable space. He played the tune through, and played it again, and
+then growing reckless, played it with the box unmuffled, till he was
+startled by a bang on the fence from without. It was but a passing boy
+with a stick, but Dicky was sufficiently disturbed to abandon his
+quarters and take his music elsewhere.
+
+What he longed to do was to take it home and play it to Looey, but that
+was out of the question: he remembered the watch. But there was Jerry's
+Gullen's canary, and him Dicky sought and found. Canary blinked solemnly
+when the resplendent box was flashed in his eyes, and set his ears back
+and forward as, muffled again in Dicky's jacket, it tinkled out its
+tune.
+
+Tommy Rann should not see it, lest he prevail over its beneficent
+dedication to the Ropers. Truly, as it was, Dicky's resolution was hard
+to abide by. The thing acquired at such a cost of patience, address,
+hard flight, and deadly fear was surely his by right--as surely, quite,
+as the clock had been. And such a thing he might never touch again. But
+he put by the temptation manfully, and came out by Jerry Gullen's front
+door. He would look no more on the music box, beautiful as it was: he
+would convey it to the Ropers before temptation came again.
+
+It was not easy to devise likely means. Their door was shut fast, of
+course. For a little while he favoured the plan of setting the box
+against the threshold, knocking, and running off. But an opportunity
+might arise of doing the thing in a way to give him some glimpse of the
+Ropers' delight, an indulgence he felt entitled to. So he waited a
+little, listened a little, and at last came out into the street, and
+loafed.
+
+It was near six o'clock, and a smell of bloater hung about Jerry
+Gullen's door and window; under the raised sash Jerry Gullen,
+close-cropped and foxy of face, smoked his pipe, sprawled his elbows,
+and contemplated the world. Dicky, with the music box stowed out of
+sight, looked as blank of design and as destitute of possession as he
+could manage; for there were loafers near Mother Gapp's, loafers at the
+Luck Row corner--at every corner--and loafers by the 'Posties,' all
+laggard of limb and alert of eye. He had just seen a child, going with
+an empty beer can, thrown down, robbed of his coppers and a poor old
+top, and kicked away in helpless tears; and the incident was commonplace
+enough, or many would have lacked pocket-money. Whosoever was too young,
+too old, or too weak to fight for it must keep what he had well hidden,
+in the Jago.
+
+Down the street came Billy Leary, big, flushed and limping, and hanging
+to a smaller man by a fistful of his coat on the shoulder. Dicky knew
+the small man for a good toy-getter--(which = watch stealer)--and judged
+he had had a good click, the proceeds whereof Billy Leary was battening
+upon in beershops. For Billy Leary rarely condescended to anything less
+honourable than bashing, and had not yet fallen so low as to go about
+stealing for himself. His missis brought many to the cosh, and his chief
+necessity--another drink--he merely demanded of the nearest person with
+the money to buy it, on pain of bashing. Or he walked into the nearest
+public-house, selected the fullest pot, and spat in it: a ceremony that
+deprived the purchaser of further interest in the beer, and left it at
+his own disposal. There were others, both Ranns and Learys, who pursued
+a similar way of life; but Billy Leary was biggest among them--big men
+not being common in the Jago--and rarely came to a difficulty: as,
+however, he did once come, having invaded the pot of a stranger, who
+turned out to be a Mile End pugilist exploring Shoreditch. It was not
+well for any Jago who had made a click to have Billy Leary know of it;
+for then the clicker was apt to be sought out, clung to, and sucked dry;
+possibly bashed as well, when nothing more was left, if Billy Leary were
+still but sober enough for the work.
+
+Dicky gazed after the man with interest. It was he whom his father was
+to fight in a week or so--perhaps in a few days: on the first Sunday,
+indeed, that Leary should be deemed fit enough. How much of the limp was
+due to yesterday's disaster and how much to to-day's beer, Dicky could
+not judge. But there seemed little reason to look for a long delay
+before the fight.
+
+As Dicky turned away a man pushed a large truck round the corner from
+Edge Lane, and on the footpath beside it walked the parson, calm as
+ever, with black clothes and tall hat, whole and unsoiled. He had made
+himself known in the Jago in the course of that afternoon. He had
+traversed it from end to end, street by street and alley by alley. His
+self-possession, his readiness, his unbending firmness, abashed and
+perplexed the Jagos, and his appearance just as the police had left
+could but convince them that he must have some mysterious and potent
+connection with the force. He had attempted very little in the way of
+domiciliary visiting, being content for the time to see his parish, and
+speak here a word and there another with his parishioners. An encounter
+with Kiddo Cook did as much as anything toward securing him a proper
+deference. In his second walk through Old Jago Street, as he neared the
+Feathers, he was aware of a bunch of grinning faces pressed against the
+bar window, and as he came abreast, forth stepped Kiddo Cook from the
+door, impudently affable, smirking and ducking with mock obsequiousness,
+and offering a quart pot.
+
+'An' 'ow jer find jerself, sir?' he asked, with pantomime cordiality.
+'Hof'ly shockin' these 'ere lower classes, ain't they? Er--yus;
+disgustin', weally. Er--might I--er--prepose--er--a little refreshment?
+Ellow me.'
+
+The parson, grimly impassive, heard him through, took the pot, and
+instantly jerking it upward, shot the beer, a single splash, into
+Kiddo's face. 'There are things I must teach you, I see, my man,' he
+said, without moving a muscle, except to return the pot.
+
+Kiddo Cook, coughing, drenched and confounded, took the pot
+instinctively and backed to Mother Gapp's door, while the bunch of faces
+at the bar window tossed and rolled in a joyous ecstasy: the ghost
+whereof presently struggled painfully among Kiddo's own dripping
+features, as he realised the completeness of his defeat, and the
+expedience of a patient grin. The parson went calmly on.
+
+Before this, indeed when he left the Ropers' room, and just after Dicky
+had started out, he had looked in at the Perrotts' quarters to speak
+about the clock. But plainly no clock was there, and Mrs Perrott's
+flaccid indignation at the suggestion, and her unmistakable ignorance of
+the affair, decided him to carry the matter no further, at any rate for
+the present. Moreover, the little hunchback's tale was inconclusive. He
+had seen no clock in Dicky's possession--had but met him on the stairs
+with a bulging jacket. The thing might be suspicious, but the new parson
+knew better than to peril his influence by charging where he could not
+convict. So he duly commiserated Hannah Perrott's troubles, suggested
+that the baby seemed unwell and had better be taken to a doctor, and
+went his way about the Jago.
+
+Now he stopped the truck by Dicky's front door and mounted to the
+Ropers' room. For he had seen that the Jago was no place for them now,
+and had himself found them a suitable room away by Dove Lane. And so,
+emboldened by his company, the Ropers came forth, and with the help of
+the man who had brought the truck, carried down the pieces of their
+bedstead, a bundle of bedding, the two chairs, the pink vases, and the
+strip of old carpet, and piled them on the truck with the few more
+things that were theirs.
+
+Dicky, with his hand on the music box in the lining of his jacket,
+sauntered up by the tail of the truck, and, waiting his chance, plunged
+his gift under the bundle of bedding, and left it there. But the little
+hunchback's sharp eyes were jealously on him, and 'Look there!' he
+squealed, ''e put 'is 'and in the truck an' took somethink!'
+
+'Ye lie!' answered Dicky, indignant and hurt, but cautiously backing
+off; 'I ain't got nothink.' He spread his hands and opened his jacket in
+proof. 'Think I got yer bloomin' bedstead?'
+
+He had nothing, it was plain. In fact, at the tail of the truck there
+was nothing he could easily have moved at all, certainly nothing he
+could have concealed. So the rest of the little removal was hurried, for
+heads were now at windows, the loafers began to draw about the truck,
+and trouble might break out at any moment: indeed, the Ropers could
+never have ventured from their room but for the general uneasy awe of
+the parson. For nothing was so dangerous in the Jago as to impugn its
+honesty. To rob another was reasonable and legitimate, and to avoid
+being robbed, so far as might be, was natural and proper. But to accuse
+anybody of a theft was unsportsmanlike, a foul outrage, a shameful
+abuse, a thing unpardonable. You might rob a man, bash a man, even kill
+a man; but to 'take away his character'--even when he had none--was to
+draw down the execrations of the whole Jago; while to assail the pure
+fame of the place--to 'give the street a bad name'--this was to bring
+the Jago howling and bashing about your ears.
+
+The truck moved off at last, amid murmurings, mutterings, and grunts
+from the onlookers. The man of the truck pulled, Roper shoved behind,
+and his wife, with her threadbare decency and her meagre, bruised face,
+carried the baby, while the hunchbacked boy went by her side. All this
+under convoy of the Reverend Henry Sturt.
+
+A little distance gave more confidence to a few, and, when the group had
+reached within a score of yards of Edge Lane, there came a hoot or two,
+a 'Yah!' and other less spellable sounds, expressive of contempt and
+defiance. Roper glanced back nervously, but the rest held on their way
+regardless. Then came a brickbat, which missed the woman by very little
+and struck the truck wheel. At this the parson stopped and turned on his
+heel, and Cocko Harnwell, the flinger, drove his hands into his breeches
+pockets and affected an interest in Mother Gapp's window; till,
+perceiving the parson's eyes directed sternly upon him, and the parson's
+stick rising to point at him, he ingloriously turned tail and scuttled
+into Jago Court.
+
+And so the Ropers left the Jago. Dove Lane was but a stone's-throw ahead
+when some of the load shifted, and the truck was stopped to set the
+matter right. The chest was pushed back, and the bedding was lifted to
+put against it, and so the musical box came to light. Roper picked it up
+and held it before the vicar's eyes. 'Look at that, sir,' he said.
+'You'll witness I know nothing of it, won't you? It ain't mine, an' I
+never saw it before. It's bin put in for spite to put a theft on us.
+When they come for it you'll bear me out, sir, won't you? That was the
+Perrott boy as was put up to do that, I'll be bound. When he was behind
+the truck.'
+
+But nobody came for Dicky's gift, and in the Jago twilight Dicky vainly
+struggled to whistle the half-remembered tune, and to persuade himself
+that he was not sorry that the box was gone.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Josh Perrott reached home late for tea but in good humour. He had spent
+most of the day at the Bag of Nails, dancing attendance on the High
+Mobsmen. Those of the High Mob were the flourishing practitioners in
+burglary, the mag, the mace, and the broads, with an outer fringe of
+such dippers--such pick-pockets--as could dress well, welshers, and
+snides-men. These, the grandees of rascality, lived in places far from
+the Jago, and some drove in gigs and pony traps. But they found the Bag
+of Nails a convenient and secluded exchange and house of call, and there
+they met, made appointments, designed villainies, and tossed for
+sovereigns: deeply reverenced by the admiring Jagos, among whom no
+ambition flourished but this--to become also of these resplendent ones.
+It was of these that old Beveridge had spoken one day to Dicky, in
+language the child but half understood. The old man sat on a curb in
+view of the Bag of Nails, and smoked a blackened bit of clay pipe. He
+hauled Dicky to his side, and, pointing with his pipe, said:--'See that
+man with the furs?'
+
+'What?' Dicky replied. 'Mean 'im in the ice-cream coat, smokin' a cigar?
+Yus.'
+
+'And the other with the brimmy tall hat, and the red face, and the
+umbrella?'
+
+'Yus.'
+
+'What are they?'
+
+''Igh mob. 'Ooks. Toffs.'
+
+'Right. Now, Dicky Perrott, you Jago whelp, look at them--look hard.
+Some day, if you're clever--cleverer than anyone in the Jago now--if
+you're only scoundrel enough, and brazen enough, and lucky enough--one
+of a thousand--maybe you'll be like them: bursting with high living,
+drunk when you like, red and pimply. There it is--that's your aim in
+life--there's your pattern. Learn to read and write, learn all you can,
+learn cunning, spare nobody and stop at nothing, and perhaps--' he
+waved his hand toward the Bag of Nails. 'It's the best the world has for
+you, for the Jago's got you, and that's the only way out, except gaol
+and the gallows. So do your devilmost, or God help you, Dicky
+Perrott--though he wont: for the Jago's got you!'
+
+Old Beveridge had eccentric talk and manners, and the Jago regarded him
+as a trifle 'balmy,' though anything but a fool. So that Dicky troubled
+little to sift the meaning of what he said.
+
+Josh Perrott's mission among the High Mob had been to discover some
+Mobsman who might be disposed to back him in the fight with Billy Leary.
+For though a private feud was the first cause of the turn-up, still
+business must never be neglected, and a feud or anything else that could
+produce money must be made to produce it, and when a fight of
+exceptional merit is placed before spectators, it is but fair that they
+should pay for their diversion.
+
+But few High Mobsmen were at the Bag of Nails that day. Sunday was the
+day of the chief gatherings of the High Mob: Sunday the market-day, so
+to speak, of the Jago, when such rent as was due weekly was paid (most
+of the Jago rents were paid daily and nightly) and other accounts were
+settled or fought out. Moreover, the High Mob were perhaps a trifle shy
+of the Jago at the time of a faction fight; and one was but just over,
+and that cut short at a third of the usual span of days. So that Josh
+waited long and touted vainly, till a patron arrived who knew him of
+old; who had employed him, indeed, as 'minder'--which means a protector
+or a bully, as you please to regard it--on a racecourse adventure
+involving bodily risk. On this occasion Josh had earned his wages with
+hard knocks given and taken, and his employer had conceived a high and
+thankful opinion of his capacity. Wherefore he listened now to the tale
+of the coming fight, and agreed to provide something in the way of
+stakes, and to put something on for Josh himself: looking for his own
+profit to the bets he might make at favourable odds with his friends.
+For Billy Leary was notorious as being near prime ruffian of the Jago,
+while Josh's reputation was neither so evil nor so wide. And so it was
+settled, and Josh came pleased to his tea; for assuredly Billy Leary
+would have no difficulty in finding another notable of the High Mob to
+cover the stakes.
+
+Dicky was at home, sitting by Looey on the bed; and when he called his
+father it seemed pretty plain to Josh that the baby was out of sorts.
+'She's rum about the eyes,' he said to his wife. 'Blimy if she don't
+look as though she was goin' to squint.'
+
+Josh was never particularly solicitous as to the children, but he saw
+that they were fed and clothed--perhaps by mere force of the habit of
+his more reputable days of plastering. He had brought home tripe, rolled
+in paper, and stuffed into his coat pocket, to make a supper on the
+strength of the day's stroke of business. When this tripe was boiled, he
+and Dicky essayed to drive morsels into Looey's mouth, and to wash them
+down with beer; but to no end but choking rejection. Whereat Josh
+decided that she must go to the dispensary in the morning. And in the
+morning he took her, with Dicky at his heels; for not only did his wife
+still nurse her neck, but in truth she feared to venture abroad.
+
+The dispensary was no charitable institution, but a shop so labelled in
+Meakin Street, one of half a dozen such kept by a medical man who lived
+away from them, and bothered himself as little about them as was
+consistent with banking the takings and signing the death-certificates.
+A needy young student, whose sole qualification was cheapness, was set
+to do the business of each place, and the uniform price for advice and
+medicine was sixpence. But there was a deal of professional character in
+the blackened and gilt lettered front windows, and the sixpences came by
+hundreds. For hospital letters but rarely came Meakin Street way. Such
+as did were mostly in the hands of tradesmen, who subscribed for the
+purpose of getting them, and gave them to their best customers, as was
+proper and business-like. And so the dispensary flourished, and the
+needy young student grew shifty and callous, and no doubt there were
+occasional faith-cures. Indeed, cures of simple science were not at all
+impossible. For there was always a good supply of two drugs in the
+place--Turkey rhubarb and sulphuric acid: both very useful, both very
+cheap, and both going very far in varied preparation, properly handled.
+An ounce or two of sulphuric acid, for instance, costing something
+fractional, dilutes with water into many gallons of physic. Excellent
+medicines they made too, and balanced each other very well by reason of
+their opposite effects. But indeed they were not all, for sometimes
+there were two or three other drugs in hand, interfering, perhaps
+troublesomely, with the simple division of therapeutics into the two
+provinces of rhubarb and sulphuric acid.
+
+Business was brisk at the dispensary: several were waiting, and medicine
+and advice were going at the rate of two minutes for sixpence. Looey's
+case was not so clear as most of the others: she could not describe its
+symptoms succinctly, as 'a pain here,' or 'a tight feeling there.' She
+did but lie heavily, staring blankly upward (she did not mind the light
+now), with the little cast in her eyes, and repeat her odd little wail;
+and Dicky and his father could tell very little. The young student had a
+passing thought that he might have known a trifle more of the matter if
+he had had time to turn up Ross on nerve and brain troubles--were such a
+proceeding consistent with the dignity of the dispensary; but
+straightway assigning the case to the rhubarb province, made up a
+powder, ordered Josh to keep the baby quiet, and pitched his sixpence
+among the others, well within the two minutes.
+
+And faith in the dispensary was strengthened, for indeed Looey seemed a
+little better after the powder; and she was fed with spoonfuls of a
+fluid bought at a chandler's shop, and called milk.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+'Dicky Perrott, come 'ere,' said Mr Aaron Weech in a voice of sad
+rebuke, a few days later. 'Come 'ere, Dicky Perrott.'
+
+He shook his head solemnly as he stooped. Dicky slouched up.
+
+'What was that you found the other day an' didn't bring to me?'
+
+'Nuffin'.' Dicky withdrew a step.
+
+'It's no good you a-tellin' me that, Dicky Perrott, when I know better.
+You know very well you can't pervent me knowin'.' His little eyes
+searched Dicky's face, and Dicky sulkily shifted his own gaze. 'You're a
+wicked, ungrateful young 'ound, an' I've a good mind to tell a p'liceman
+to find out where you got that clock. Come 'ere now--don't you try
+runnin' away. Wot! after me a-takin' you in when you was 'ungry, an'
+givin' you cawfy an' cake, an' good advice like a father, an' a bloater
+an' all, an' you owin' me thrippence a'peny besides, then you goes
+an'--an' takes yer findin's somewhere else!'
+
+'I never!' protested Dicky stoutly. But Mr Weech's cunning, equal to a
+shrewd guess that since his last visit Dicky had probably had another
+'find,' and quick to detect a lie, was slack to perceive a truth.
+
+'Now don't you go an' add on a wicked lie to yer sinful ungratefulness,
+wotever you do,' he said, severely. 'That's wuss, an' I alwis know.
+Doncher know the little 'ymn?--
+
+    An' 'im as does one fault at fust
+    An' lies to 'ide it, makes it two.
+
+It's bad enough to be ungrateful to me as is bin so kind to you, an'
+it's wuss to break the fust commandment. If the bloater don't inflooence
+you, the 'oly 'ymn ought. 'Ow would you like me to go an' ask yer father
+for that thrippence a'peny you owe me? That's wot I'll 'ave to do if you
+don't mind.'
+
+Dicky would not have liked it at all, as his frightened face testified.
+
+'Then find somethink an' pay it at once, an' then I won't. I won't be
+'ard on you, if you'll be a good boy. But don't git playin' no more
+tricks--'cos I'll know all about 'em. Now go an' find somethink quick.'
+And Dicky went.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Ten days after his first tour of the Old Jago, the Reverend Henry Sturt
+first preached in the parish church made of a stable, in an alley behind
+Meakin Street, but few yards away, though beyond sight and sound of the
+Jago. There, that Sunday morning was a morning of importance, a time of
+excitement, for the fight between Billy Leary and Josh Perrott was to
+come off in Jago Court. The assurance that there was money in the thing
+was a sovereign liniment for Billy Leary's bruises--for they were but
+bruises--and he hastened to come by that money, lest it melt by caprice
+of the backers, or the backers themselves fall at unlucky odds with the
+police. He made little of Josh Perrott, his hardness and known fighting
+power notwithstanding. For was there not full a stone and a half between
+their weights? and had Billy not four or five inches the better in
+height and a commensurate advantage in reach? And Billy Leary's own
+hardness and fighting power were well proved enough.
+
+It was past eleven o'clock. The weekly rents--for the week
+forthcoming--had been extracted, or partly extracted, or scuffled over.
+Old Poll Rann, who had made money in sixty-five years of stall-farming
+and iniquity, had made the rounds of the six houses she rented, to turn
+out the tenants of the night who were disposed to linger. Many had
+already stripped themselves to their rags at pitch-and-toss in Jago
+Court; and the game still went busily on in the crowded area and in
+overflow groups in Old Jago Street; and men found themselves deprived,
+not merely of the money for that day's food and that night's lodging,
+but even of the last few pence set by to back a horse for Tuesday's
+race. A little-regarded fight or two went on here and there as usual,
+and on kerbs and doorsteps sat women, hideous at all ages, filling the
+air with the rhetoric of the Jago.
+
+Presently down from Edge Lane and the 'Posties' came the High Mobsmen,
+swaggering in check suits and billycocks, gold chains and lumpy rings:
+stared at, envied, and here and there pointed out by name or exploit.
+'Him as done the sparks in from Regent Street for nine centuries o'
+quids'; 'Him as done five stretch for a snide bank bill an' they never
+found the oof'; 'Him as maced the bookies in France an' shot the nark in
+the boat'; and so forth. And the High Mob being come, the fight was due.
+
+Of course, a fight merely as a fight was no great matter of interest:
+the thing was too common. But there was money on this; and again, it was
+no common thing to find Billy Leary defied, still less to find him
+challenged. Moreover, the thing had a Rann and Leary complexion, and it
+arose out of the battle of less than a fortnight back. So that Josh
+Perrott did not lack for partisans, though not a Rann believed he could
+stand long before Billy Leary Billy's cause, too, had lost some
+popularity because it had been reported that Sally Green, in hospital,
+had talked of 'summonsing' Norah Walsh in the matter of her mangled
+face: a scandalous device to overreach, a piece of foul practice
+repugnant to all proper feeling; more especially for such a
+distinguished Jago as Sally Green--so well able to take care of herself.
+But all this was nothing as affecting the odds. They ruled at three to
+one on Billy Leary, with few takers, and went to four to one before the
+fight began.
+
+Josh Perrott had been strictly sober for a full week. And the family had
+lived better, for he had brought meat home each day. Now he sat
+indifferently at the window of his room, and looked out at the crowd in
+Jago Court till such time as he might be wanted. He had not been out of
+the room that morning: he was saving his energy for Billy Leary.
+
+As for Dicky, he had scarce slept for excitement. For days he had
+enjoyed consideration among his fellows on account of this fight. Now he
+shook and quivered, and nothing relieved his agitation but violent
+exertion. So he rushed downstairs a hundred times to see if the High Mob
+were coming, and back to report that they were not. At last he saw their
+overbearing checks, and tore upstairs, face before knees, with ''Ere
+they are, father! 'Ere they are! They're comin' down the street,
+father!' and danced frenzied about the room and the landing.
+
+Presently Jerry Gullen and Kiddo Cook came, as seconds, to take Josh
+out, and then Dicky quieted a little externally, though he was bursting
+at the chest and throat, and his chin jolted his teeth together
+uncontrollably. Josh dragged off his spotted coat and waistcoat and
+flung them on the bed, and then was helped out of his ill-mended blue
+shirt. He gave a hitch to his trousers-band, tightened his belt, and was
+ready.
+
+'Ta-ta, ol' gal,' he said to his wife, with a grin; 'back agin soon.'
+
+'With a bob or two for ye,' added Kiddo Cook, grinning likewise.
+
+Hannah Perrott sat pale and wistful, with the baby on her knees.
+Through the morning she had sat so, wretched and helpless,
+sometimes putting her face in her hands, sometimes breaking out
+hopelessly:--'Don't, Josh, don't--good Gawd, Josh, I wish you wouldn't!'
+or 'Josh, Josh, I wish I was dead!' Josh had fought before, it was true,
+and more than once, but then she had learned of the matter afterward.
+This preparation and long waiting were another thing. Once she had even
+exclaimed that she would go with him--though she meant nothing.
+
+Now, as Josh went out at the door, she bent over Looey and hid her face
+again. 'Good luck, father,' called Dicky, 'go it!' Though the words
+would hardly pass his throat, and he struggled to believe that he had no
+fear for his father.
+
+No sooner was the door shut than he rushed to the window, though Josh
+could not appear in Jago Court for three or four minutes yet. The
+sash-line was broken, and the window had been propped open with a stick.
+In his excitement Dicky dislodged the stick, and the sash came down on
+his head, but he scarce felt the blow, and readjusted the stick with
+trembling hands, regardless of the bruise rising under his hair.
+
+'Aincher goin' to look, mother?' he asked. 'Wontcher 'old up Looey?'
+
+But his mother would not look. As for Looey, she looked at nothing. She
+had been taken to the dispensary once again, and now lay drowsy and
+dull, with little more movement than a general shudder and a twitching
+of the face at long intervals. The little face itself was thinner and
+older than ever: horribly flea-bitten still, but bloodlessly pale. Mrs
+Perrott had begun to think Looey was ailing for something; thought it
+might be measles or whooping-cough coming, and complained that children
+were a continual worry.
+
+Dicky hung head and shoulders out of the window, clinging to the broken
+sill and scraping feverishly at the wall with his toes. Jago Court was
+fuller than ever. The tossing went on, though now with more haste, that
+most might be made of the remaining time. A scuffle still persisted in
+one corner. Some stood to gaze at the High Mob, who, to the number of
+eight or ten, stood in an exalted group over against the back fences of
+New Jago Street; but the thickest knot was about Cocko Harnwell's
+doorstep, whereon sat Billy Leary, his head just visible through the
+press about him, waiting to keep his appointment.
+
+Then a close group appeared at the archway, and pushed into the crowd,
+which made way at its touch, the disturbed tossers pocketing their
+coppers, but the others busily persisting, with no more than a glance
+aside between the spins. Josh Perrott's cropped head and bare shoulders
+marked the centre of the group, and as it came, another group moved out
+from Cocko Harnwell's doorstep, with Billy Leary's tall bulk shining
+pink and hairy in its midst.
+
+''E's in the court, mother,' called Dicky, scraping faster with his
+toes.
+
+The High Mobsmen moved up toward the middle of the court, and some from
+the two groups spread and pushed back the crowd. Still half a dozen
+couples, remote by the walls, tossed and tossed faster than ever, moving
+this way and that as the crowd pressed.
+
+Now there was an irregular space of bare cobble stones and house refuse,
+five or six yards across, in the middle of Jago Court, and all round it
+the shouting crowd was packed tight, those at the back standing on sills
+and hanging to fences. Every window was a clump of heads, and women
+yelled savagely or cheerily down and across. The two groups were merged
+in the press at each side of the space, Billy Leary and Josh Perrott in
+front of each, with his seconds.
+
+'Naa then, any more 'fore they begin?' bawled a High Mobsman, turning
+about among his fellows. 'Three to one on the big 'un--three to one!
+'Ere, I'll give fours--four to one on Leary! Fourer one! Fourer one!'
+
+But they shook their heads; they would wait a little. Leary and Perrott
+stepped out. The last of the tossers stuffed away his coppers, and
+sought for a hold on the fence.
+
+'They're a-sparrin', mother!' cried Dicky, pale and staring, elbows and
+legs a-work, till he was like to pitch out of window. From his mother
+there but jerked a whimpering sob, which he did not hear.
+
+The sparring was not long. There was little of subtlety in the milling
+of the Jago: mostly no more than a rough application of the main hits
+and guards, with much rushing and ruffianing. What there was of
+condition in the two men was Josh's: smaller and shorter, he had a
+certain hard brownness of hide that Leary, in his heavy opulence of
+flesh, lacked; and there was a horny quality in his face and hands that
+reminded the company of his boast of invulnerability to anything milder
+than steel. Also his breadth of chest was great. Nevertheless all odds
+seemed against him, by reason of Billy Leary's size, reach, and fighting
+record.
+
+The men rushed together, and Josh was forced back by weight. Leary's
+great fists, left and right, shot into his face with smacking reports,
+but left no mark on the leathery skin, and Josh, fighting for the body,
+drove his knuckles into the other's ribs with a force that jerked a
+thick grunt from Billy's lips at each blow.
+
+There was a roar of shouts. 'Go it, father! Fa--ther! Fa--ther!' Dicky
+screamed from the window, till his voice broke in his throat and he
+coughed himself livid. The men were at holds, and swaying this way and
+that over the uneven stones. Blood ran copiously from Billy Leary's nose
+over his mouth and chin, and, as they turned, Dicky saw his father spit
+away a tooth over Leary's shoulder. They clipped and hauled to and fro,
+each striving to break the other's foothold. Then Perrott stumbled at a
+hole, lost his feet, and went down, with Leary on top.
+
+Cheers and yells rent the air, as each man was taken to his own side by
+his seconds. Dicky let go the sill and turned to his mother, wild of
+eye, breathless with broken chatter.
+
+'Father 'it 'im on the nose, mother, like that--'is ribs is goin' black
+where father pasted 'em--'e was out o' breath fust--there' blood all
+over 'is face, mother--father would 'a' chucked 'im over if 'e 'adn't
+tumbled in a 'ole--father 'it 'im twice on the jore--'e--O!'
+
+Dicky was back again on the sill, kicking and shouting, for time was
+called, and the two men rushed again into a tangled knot. But the close
+strife was short. Josh had but closed to spoil his man's wind, and,
+leaving his head to take care of itself, stayed till he had driven left
+and right on the mark, and then got back. Leary came after him, gasping
+and blowing already, and Josh feinted a lead and avoided, bringing Leary
+round on his heel and off again in chase. Once more Josh met him, drove
+at his ribs, and got away out of reach. Leary's wind was going fast, and
+his partisans howled savagely at Josh--perceiving his tactics--taunting
+him with running away, daring him to stand and fight. 'I'll take that
+four to one,' called a High Mobsman to him who had offered the odds in
+the beginning. 'I'll stand a quid on Perrott!'
+
+'Not with me you won't,' the other answered. 'Evens, if you like.'
+
+'Right. Done at evens, a quid.'
+
+Perrott, stung at length by the shouts from Leary's corner, turned on
+Billy and met him at full dash. He was himself puffing by this, though
+much less than his adversary, and, at the cost of a heavy blow (which he
+took on his forehead), he visited Billy's ribs once more.
+
+Both men were grunting and gasping now, and the sound of blows was as of
+the confused beating of carpets. Dicky, who had been afflicted to
+heart-burst by his father's dodging and running, which he mistook for
+simple flight, now broke into excited speech once more:--
+
+'Father's 'it 'im on the jore ag'in--'is eye's a-bungin' up--_Go it,
+father, bash 'i-i-i-m!_ Father's landin' 'im--'e--'
+
+Hannah Perrott crept to the window and looked. She saw the foul Jago
+mob, swaying and bellowing about the shifting edge of an open patch, in
+the midst whereof her husband and Billy Leary, bruised, bloody and
+gasping, fought and battered infuriately; and she crept back to the bed
+and bent her face on Looey's unclean little frock; till a fit of tense
+shuddering took the child, and the mother looked up again.
+
+Without, the round ended. For a full minute the men took and gave knock
+for knock, and then Leary, wincing from another body-blow, swung his
+right desperately on Perrott's ear, and knocked him over.
+
+Exulting shouts rose from the Leary faction, and the blow struck Dicky's
+heart still. But Josh was up almost before Kiddo Cook reached him, and
+Dicky saw a wide grin on his face as he came to his corner. The leathery
+toughness of the man, and the advantage it gave him, now grew apparent.
+He had endured to the full as much and as hard punching as had his
+foe--even more, and harder; once he had fallen on the broken
+cobble-stones with all Leary's weight on him; and once he had been
+knocked down on them. But, except for the sweat that ran over his face
+and down his back, and for a missing front tooth and the lip it had cut,
+he showed little sign of the struggle; while Leary's left eye was a mere
+slit in a black wen, his nose was a beaten mass, which had ensanguined
+him (and indeed Josh) from crown to waist, and his chest and flanks were
+a mottle of bruises.
+
+'Father's awright, mother--I see 'im laughin'! And 'e's smashed Leary's
+nose all over 'is face!'
+
+Up again they sprang for the next round, Perrott active and daring,
+Leary cautious and a trifle stiff. Josh rushed in and struck at the
+tender ribs once more, took two blows callously on his head, and sent
+his left at the nose, with a smack as of a flail on water. With that
+Leary rushed like a bull, and Josh was driven and battered back, for the
+moment without response. But he ducked, and slipped away, and came
+again, fresh and vicious. And now it was seen that Perrott's toughness
+of hand was lasting. Leary's knuckles were raw, cut, and flayed, and
+took little good by the shock when they met the other's stubborn muzzle;
+while Josh still flung in his corneous fists, hard and lasting as a bag
+of bullets.
+
+But suddenly, stooping to reach the mark once more, Josh's foot turned
+on a projecting stone, and he floundered forward into Billy's arms.
+Like a flash his neck was clipped in the big man's left arm: Josh
+Perrott was in chancery. Quick and hard Leary pounded the imprisoned
+head, while Jerry Gullen and Kiddo Cook danced distracted and dismayed,
+and the crowd whooped and yelled.
+
+Dicky hung delirious over the sill, and shrieked he knew not what. He
+saw his father fighting hard at the back and ribs with both hands, and
+Leary hammering his face in a way to make pulp of an ordinary mazzard.
+Then suddenly Josh Perrott's right hand shot up from behind, over
+Leary's shoulder, and gripped him at the chin. Slowly, with tightened
+muscles, he forced his man back over his bent knee, Leary clinging and
+swaying, but impotent to struggle. Then, with an extra wrench from Josh,
+up came Leary's feet from the ground, higher, higher, till suddenly Josh
+flung him heavily over, heels up, and dropped on him with all his
+weight.
+
+The Ranns roared again. Josh was up in a moment, sitting on Kiddo Cook's
+knee, and taking a drink from a bottle. Billy Leary lay like a man
+fallen from a house-top. His seconds turned him on his back, and dragged
+him to his corner. There he lay limp and senseless, and there was a cut
+at the back of his head.
+
+The High Mobsman who held the watch waited for half a minute and then
+called 'Time!' Josh Perrott stood up, but Billy Leary was knocked out of
+knowledge, and heard not. He was beaten.
+
+Josh Perrott was involved in a howling, dancing crowd, and was pushed,
+grinning, this way and that, slapped on the back, and offered drinks. In
+the outskirts the tossers, inveterate, pulled out their pence and
+resumed their game.
+
+Dicky spun about, laughing, flushed, and elated, and as soon as the door
+was distinct to his dazzled sight, he ran off downstairs. His mother,
+relieved and even pleased, speculated as to what money the thing might
+bring. She put the baby on the bed, and looked from the window.
+
+Josh, in the crowd, shouted and beckoned her, pointing and tapping his
+bare shoulder. He wanted his clothes. She gathered together the shirt,
+the coat, and the waistcoat, and hurried downstairs. Looey could come to
+no harm lying on the bed for a few minutes. And, indeed, Hannah Perrott
+felt that she would be a person of distinction in the crowd, and was not
+sorry to have an excuse for going out.
+
+'Three cheers for the missis!' sang out Kiddo Cook as she came through
+the press. 'I said 'e'd 'ave a bob or two for you, didn't I?' Josh
+Perrott, indeed, was rich--a capitalist of five pounds. For a sovereign
+a side had been put up, and his backer had put on a sovereign for him at
+three to one. So that now it became him to stand beer to many
+sympathisers. Also, he felt that the missis should have some part in the
+celebration, for was it not her injury that he had avenged on Sally
+Green's brother? So Hannah Perrott, pleased though timorous, was hauled
+away with the rest to Mother Gapp's.
+
+Here she sat by Josh's side for an hour. Once or twice she thought of
+Looey, but with native inertness she let the thought slip. Perhaps
+Dicky would be back, and at any rate it was hard if she must not take
+half an hour's relaxation once in a way. At last came Dicky, urgent
+perplexity in his face, looking in at the door. Josh, minded to be
+generous all round, felt for a penny.
+
+'Mother,' said Dicky, plucking at her arm, 'Pigeony Poll's at 'ome,
+nussin' Looey; she told me to tell you to come at once.'
+
+Pigeony Poll? What right had she in the room? The ghost of Hannah
+Perrott's respectability rose in resentment. She supposed she must go.
+She arose, mystified, and went, with Dicky at her skirts.
+
+Pigeony Poll sat by the window with the baby in her arms, and pale
+misgiving in her dull face. 'I--I come in, Mrs Perrott, mum,' she said,
+with a hush in her thick voice, 'I come in 'cos I see you goin' out, an'
+I thought the baby'd be alone. She--she's 'ad a sort o' fit--all stiff
+an' blue in the face and grindin' 'er little mouth. She's left auf
+now--but I--I dunno what to make of 'er. She's so--so--'
+
+Hannah Perrott stared blankly, and lifted the child, whose arm dropped
+and hung. The wizen age had gone from Looey's face, and the lids were
+down on the strained eyes; her pale lips lay eased of the old
+pinching--even parted in a smile. For she looked in the face of the
+Angel that plays with the dead children.
+
+Hannah Perrott's chin fell. 'Lor',' she said bemusedly, and sat on the
+bed.
+
+An odd croaking noise broke in jerks from Pigeony Poll as she crept from
+the room, with her face bowed in the bend of her arm, like a weeping
+schoolboy. Dicky stared, confounded.... Josh came and gazed stupidly,
+with his mouth open, walking tip-toe. But at a word from Kiddo Cook, who
+came in his tracks, he snatched the little body and clattered off to the
+dispensary, to knock up the young student.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rumour went in the Jago that Josh Perrott was in double luck. For
+here was insurance money without a doubt. But in truth that was a thing
+the Perrotts had neglected.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hannah Perrott felt a listless relief; Josh felt nothing in particular,
+except that there was no other thing to be done, and that Mother Gapp's
+would be a cheerful place to finish the day in, and keep up the missis's
+pecker.
+
+So that eight o'clock that evening at Perrotts' witnessed a darkening
+room wherein an inconsiderable little corpse lay on a bed; while a small
+ragamuffin spread upon it with outstretched arms, exhausted with
+sobbing, a soak of muddy tears:--'O Looey, Looey! Can't you 'ear? Won't
+you never come to me no more?'
+
+And the Reverend Henry Sturt, walking from church through Luck Row
+toward his lodgings in Kingsland Road, heard shouts and riot behind the
+grimy panes of Mother Gapp's, and in the midst the roar of many voices
+joined in the Jago chant:--
+
+_Six bloomin' long months in a prison, Six more bloomin' months I must
+stay, For meetin' a bloke in our alley, An' takin' 'is uxter away!_
+
+_Toora-li--toora-li--looral, Toora-li--toora-li--lay, A-coshin' a bloke
+in our alley, An' takin' 'is uxter away!_
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+On an autumn day four years after his first coming to the Jago, the
+Reverend Henry Sturt left a solicitor's office in Cheapside, and walked
+eastward, with something more of hope and triumph in him than he had
+felt since the Jago fell to his charge. For the ground was bought
+whereon should be built a church and buildings accessory, and he felt,
+not that he was like to see any great result from his struggle, but that
+perhaps he might pursue it better armed and with less of grim despair
+than had been his portion hitherto.
+
+It had taken him four years to gather the money for the site, and some
+of it he was paying from his own pocket. He was unmarried, and had
+therefore no reason to save. Still, he must be careful, for the sake of
+the parish: the church must be built, and some of the money would
+probably be wanted for that. Moreover, there were other calls. The
+benefice brought a trifle less than £200 a year, and out of that, so far
+as it would go, he paid (with some small outside help) £130 for rent of
+the temporary church and the adjacent rooms; the organist's salary; the
+rates and the gas-bills; the cost of cleaning, care, and repair; the
+sums needed for such relief as was impossible to be withheld; and a
+thousand small things beside. While the Jagos speculated wildly among
+themselves as to the vast sums he must make by his job. For what toff
+would come and live in the Jago except for a consideration of solid
+gain? What other possible motive could there be, indeed?
+
+Still, he had an influence among them such as they had never known
+before. For one thing, they feared in him what they took for a sort of
+supernatural insight. The mean cunning of the Jago, subtle as it was,
+and baffling to most strangers, foundered miserably before his
+relentless intelligence; and crafty rogues--'wide as Broad Street,' as
+their proverb went--at first sulked, faltered and prevaricated
+transparently, but soon gave up all hope or effort to deceive him. Thus
+he was respected. Once he had made it plain that he was no common
+milch-cow in the matter of gratuities: to be bamboozled for shillings,
+cajoled for coals, and bullied for blankets: then there became apparent
+in him qualities of charity and lovingkindness, well-judged and
+governed, that awoke in places a regard that was in a way akin to
+affection. And the familiar habit of the Jago slowly grew to call him
+Father Sturt.
+
+Father Sturt was not to be overreached: that was the axiom gloomily
+accepted by all in the Jago who lived by what they accounted their wits.
+You could not juggle shillings and clothing (convertible into shillings)
+out of Father Sturt by the easy fee-faw-fum of repentance and salvation
+that served with so many. There were many of the Jagos (mightily
+despised by some of the sturdier ruffians) who sallied forth from time
+to time into neighbouring regions in pursuit of the profitable
+sentimentalist: discovering him--black-coated, earnest, green--sometimes
+a preacher, sometimes a layman, sometimes one having authority on the
+committee of a charitable institution; dabbling in the East End on his
+own account, or administering relief for a mission, or disbursing a
+Mansion House Fund. He was of two chief kinds: the Merely-Soft,--the
+'man of wool' as the Jago word went,--for whom any tale was good enough,
+delivered with the proper wistful misery: and the Gullible-Cocksure,
+confident in a blind experience, who was quite as easy to tap, when
+approached with a becoming circumspection. A rough and ready method,
+which served well in most cases with both sorts, was a profession of
+sudden religious awakening. For this, one offered an aspect either of
+serene happiness or of maniacal exaltation, according to the customer's
+taste. A better way, but one demanding greater subtlety, was the
+assumption of the part of Earnest Inquirer, hesitating on the brink of
+Salvation. For the attitude was capable of indefinite prolongation, and
+was ever productive of the boots, the coats, and the half-crowns used to
+coax weak brethren into the fold. But with Father Sturt, such trouble
+was worse than useless; it was, indeed, but to invite a humiliating
+snub. Thus, when Fluffy Pike first came to Father Sturt with the
+intelligence that he had at last found Grace, the Father Sturt asked if
+he had found it in a certain hamper--a hamper hooked that morning from a
+railway van--and if it were of a quality likely to inspire an act of
+restoration to the goods office. Nothing was to be done with a man of
+this disgustingly practical turn of mind, and the Jagos soon ceased from
+trying.
+
+Father Sturt had made more of the stable than the make-shift church he
+had found. He had organised a club in a stable adjoining, and he lived
+in the rooms over the shut-up shop. In the club he gathered the men of
+the Jago indiscriminately, with the sole condition of good behaviour on
+the premises. And there they smoked, jumped, swung on horizontal bars,
+boxed, played at cards and bagatelle, free from interference save when
+interference became necessary. For the women there were sewing-meetings
+and singing. And all governed with an invisible discipline, which, being
+brought to action, was found to be of iron.
+
+Now there was ground on which might be built a worthier church; and
+Father Sturt had in mind a church which should have by its side a
+cleanly lodging-house, a night-shelter, a club, baths and washhouses.
+And at a stroke he would establish this habitation and wipe out the
+blackest spot in the Jago. For the new site comprised the whole of Jago
+Court and the houses that masked it in Old Jago Street.
+
+This was a dream of the future--perhaps of the immediate future, if a
+certain new millionaire could only be interested in the undertaking--but
+of the future certainly. The money for the site alone had been hard
+enough to gather. In the first place the East London Elevation Mission
+and Pansophical Institute was asking very diligently for funds--and was
+getting them. It was to that, indeed, that people turned by habit when
+minded to invest in the amelioration of the East End. Then about this
+time there had arisen a sudden quacksalver, a Panjandrum of
+philanthropy, a mummer of the market-place, who undertook, for a fixed
+sum, to abolish poverty and sin together; and many, pleased with the new
+gaudery, poured out before him the money that had gone to maintain
+hospitals and to feed proved charities. So that gifts were scarce and
+hard to come by--indeed, were apt to be thought unnecessary, for was not
+misery to be destroyed out of hand? Moreover, Father Sturt wanted not
+for enemies among the Sentimental-Cocksure. He was callous and cynical
+in face of the succulent penitence of Fluffy Pike and his kind. He
+preferred the frank rogue before the calculating snivelmonger. He had a
+club at which boxing was allowed, and dominoes--flat ungodliness. He
+shook hands familiarly every day with the lowest characters: his tastes
+were vulgar and brutal. And the company at his club was really dreadful.
+These things the Cocksure said, with shaking of heads; and these they
+took care should be known among such as might give Father Sturt money.
+Father Sturt!--the name itself was sheer papistry. And many comforted
+themselves by writing him anonymous letters, displaying hell before his
+eyes, and dealing him vivid damnation.
+
+So Father Sturt tramped back to the Jago, and to the strain and struggle
+that ceased not for one moment of his life, though it left never a mark
+of success behind it. For the Jago was much as ever. Were the lump once
+leavened by the advent of any denizen a little less base than the rest,
+were a native once ridiculed and persuaded into a spell of work and
+clean living, then must Father Sturt hasten to drive him from the Jago
+ere its influence suck him under for ever; leaving for his own community
+none but the entirely vicious. And among these he spent his life:
+preaching little, in the common sense, for that were but idle vanity in
+this place; but working, alleviating, growing into the Jago life,
+flinging scorn and ridicule on evil things, grateful for tiny negative
+successes--for keeping a few from ill-behaviour but for an hour;
+conscious that wherever he was not, iniquity flourished unreproved; and
+oppressed by the remembrance that albeit the Jago death-rate ruled full
+four times that of all London beyond, still the Jago rats bred and bred
+their kind unhindered, multiplying apace and infecting the world.
+
+In Luck Row he came on Josh Perrott, making for home with something
+under the skirt of his coat 'How d'ye do, Josh?' said Father Sturt,
+clapping a hand on Josh's shoulder, and offering it as Josh turned
+about.
+
+Josh, with a shifting of the object under his coat, hastened to tap his
+cap-peak with his forefinger before shaking hands. He grinned broadly,
+and looked this way and that, with mingled gratification and
+embarrassment, as was the Jago way in such circumstances. Because one
+could never tell whether Father Sturt would exchange a mere friendly
+sentence or two, or, with concealed knowledge, put some disastrous
+question about a watch, or a purse, or a breast-pin, or what not.
+
+'Very well, thanks, Father,' answered Josh, and grinned amiably at the
+wall beyond the vicar's elbow.
+
+'And what have you been doing just lately?'
+
+'Oo--odd jobs, Father.' Always the same answer, all over the Jago.
+
+'Not quite such odd jobs as usual, I hope, Josh, eh?' Father Sturt
+smiled, and twitched Josh playfully by the button-hole as one might
+treat a child. 'I once heard of a very odd job in the Kingsland Road
+that got a fine young man six months' holiday. Eh, Josh?'
+
+Josh Perrott wriggled and grinned sheepishly; tried to frown, failed,
+and grinned again. He had only been out a few weeks from that six moon.
+Presently he said:--'Awright, Father; you do rub it into a bloke, no
+mistake.'
+
+The grin persisted as he looked first at the wall, then at the pavement,
+then down the street, but never in the parson's face.
+
+'Ah, there's a deal of good in a blister sometimes, isn't there, Josh?
+What's that I see--a clock? Not another odd job, eh?'
+
+It was indeed a small nickel-plated American clock which Josh had under
+his coat, and which he now partly uncovered with positive protests. 'No,
+s'elp me, Father, it's all straight--all fair trade, Father--jist a swop
+for somethink else, on me solemn davy. That's wot it is,
+Father--straight.'
+
+'Well, I'm glad you thought to get it, Josh,' Father Sturt pursued,
+still twitching the button-hole. 'You never have been a punctual
+churchgoer, you know, Josh, and I'm glad you've made arrangements to
+improve. You'll have no excuse now, you know, and I shall expect you on
+Sunday morning--promptly. Don't forget: I shall be looking for you.' And
+Father Sturt shook hands again, and passed on, leaving Josh Perrott
+still grinning dubiously, and striving to assimilate the invitation to
+church.
+
+The clock was indeed an exchange, though not altogether an innocent one:
+the facts being these. Early that morning Josh had found himself
+scrambling hastily along a turning out of Brick Lane, accompanied by a
+parcel of nine or ten pounds of tobacco, and extremely conscious of the
+hasty scrambling of several other people round the corner. Some of these
+people turned that corner before Josh reached the next, so that his
+course was observed, and it became politic to get rid of his parcel
+before a possible heading-off in Meakin Street. There was one place
+where this might be done, and that was at Weech's. A muddy yard, one of
+a tangle of such places behind Meakin Street, abutted on Weech's
+back-fence; and it was no uncommon thing for a Jago on the crook, hard
+pressed, to pitch his plunder over the fence, double out into the
+crowd, and call on Mr Aaron Weech for the purchase-money as soon as
+opportunity served. The manoeuvre was a simple one, facilitated by the
+plan of the courts; but it was only adopted in extreme cases, because Mr
+Aaron Weech was at best but a mean paymaster, and with so much of the
+upper hand in the bargain as these circumstances conferred, was apt to
+be meaner than ever. But this case seemed to call for the stratagem, and
+Josh made for the muddy yard, dropped the parcel over the fence, with a
+loud whistle, and backed off by the side passage in the regular way.
+
+When he called on Mr Aaron Weech a few hours later, that talented
+tradesman, with liberal gestures, told out shillings singly in his hand,
+pausing after each as though that were the last. But Josh held his hand
+persistently open, till Mr Weech, having released the fifth shilling,
+stopped altogether, scandalised at such rapacity. But still Josh was not
+satisfied, and as he was not quite so easy a customer to manage as the
+boys who commonly fenced at the shop, Mr Weech compromised, in the end,
+by throwing in a cheap clock. It had been in hand for a long time; and
+Josh was fain to take it, since he could get no more. And thus it was
+that Dicky, coming in at about five o'clock, was astonished to see on
+the mantel-piece, amid the greasy ruins of many candle ends, the clock
+that had belonged to the Ropers four years before.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+As for Dicky, he went to school. That is to say, he turned up now and
+again, at irregular intervals, at the Board School just over the Jago
+border in Honey Lane. When anything was given away, he attended as a
+matter of course; but he went now and again without such
+inducement--perhaps because he fancied an afternoon's change, perhaps
+because the weather was cold and the school was warm. He was classed as
+a half-timer, an arrangement which variegated the register, but
+otherwise did not matter. Other boys, half-timers or not, attended as
+little as he. It was long since the managers had realised the futility
+of attempting compulsion in the Jago.
+
+Dicky was no fool, and he had picked up some sort of reading and writing
+as he went along. Moreover, he had grown an expert thief, and had taken
+six strokes of a birch-rod by order of a magistrate. As yet he rarely
+attempted a pocket, being, for most opportunities, too small; but he was
+comforted by the reflection that probably he would never get really
+tall, and thus grow out of pocket-picking when he was fully experienced,
+as was the fate of some. For no tall man can be a successful pickpocket,
+because he must bend to his work, and so advertise it to every beholder.
+
+Meantime Dicky practised that petty larceny which is possible in every
+street in London; and at odd times he would play the scout among the
+practitioners of the 'fat's a-running' industry. If one crossed Meakin
+Street by way of Luck Row and kept his way among the courts ahead, he
+presently reached the main Bethnal Green Road, at the end whereof stood
+the great goods depot of a railway company. Here carts and vans went to
+and fro all day, laden with goods from the depot, and certain gangs
+among the Jagos preyed on these continually. A quick-witted scout stood
+on the look-out for such vehicles as went with unguarded tailboards. At
+the approach of one such he sent the shout '_Fat's a-runnin'!_' up Luck
+Row, and, quick at the signal, a gang scuttled down, by the court or
+passage which his waved hand might hint at, seized whatever could be
+snatched from the cart, and melted away into the courts, sometimes
+leaving a few hands behind to hinder and misdirect pursuit. Taking one
+capture with another, the thing paid very well; and besides, there were
+many vans laden with parcels of tobacco, not from the railway depot but
+from the tobacco factories hard by, a click from which was apt to prove
+especially lucrative. Dicky was a notable success as scout. The
+department was a fairly safe one, but it was not always easy to extract
+from the gang the few coppers that were regarded as sufficient share for
+service done. Moreover, Mr Weech was not pleased; for by now Dicky was
+near to being his most remunerative client, and the cart robberies
+counted nothing, for the fat's a-running boys fenced their swag with a
+publican at Hoxton. And though Dicky had grown out of his childish
+belief that Mr Weech could hear a mile away and see through a wall, he
+had a cautious dread of the weapon he supposed to lie ever to his
+patron's hand--betrayal to the police. In other respects things were
+easier. His father took no heed of what he did, and even his mother had
+so far accepted destiny as to ask if he had a copper or two, when there
+was a scarcity. Indeed Hannah Perrott filled her place in the Jago
+better than of old. She would gossip, she drew no very rigid line as to
+her acquaintance, and Dicky had seen her drunk. Still, for Old Jago
+Street she was a quiet woman, and she never brawled nor fought. Of
+fighting, indeed, Josh could do enough for the whole family, once again
+four in number. For the place of Looey, forgotten, was supplied by Em,
+aged two.
+
+When Dicky came home and recognised the clock on the mantel-piece, being
+the more certain because his mother told him it had come from Weech's,
+the thing irritated him strangely. Through all those four years since he
+had carried that clock to Mr Weech, he had never got rid of the wretched
+hunchback. He, too, went to the Board School in Honey Lane (it lay
+between Dove Lane and the Jago), but he went regularly, worked hard, and
+was a favourite with teachers. So far, Dicky was unconcerned. But scarce
+an ill chance came to him but, sooner or later, he found the hunchback
+at the back of it. If ever a teacher mysteriously found out that it was
+Dicky who had drawn his portrait, all nose and teeth, on the blackboard,
+the tale had come from Bobby Roper. Whenever Dicky, chancing upon school
+by ill luck on an afternoon when sums were to be done, essayed to copy
+answers from his neighbour's slate, up shot the hunchback's hand in an
+instant, the tale was told, and handers were Dicky's portion. Once,
+dinnerless and hungry, he had stolen a sandwich from a teacher's desk;
+and, though he had thought himself alone and unseen, the hunchback knew
+it, and pointed him out, white malice in his thin face and eager hate in
+his thrust finger. For a fortnight Dicky dared not pass a little fruit
+shop in Meakin Street, because of an attempt on an orange, betrayed by
+his misshapen schoolfellow, which brought him a hard chase from the
+fruiterer and a bad bruise on the spine from a board flung after him.
+The hunchback's whole energies--even his whole time--seemed to be
+devoted to watching him. Dicky, on his part, received no injuries
+meekly. In the beginning he had tried threats and public jeers at his
+enemy's infirmity. Then, on some especially exasperating occasion, he
+pounded Bobby Roper savagely about the head and capsized him into a
+mud-heap. But bodily reprisal, though he erected it into a practice,
+proved no deterrent. For the little hunchback, though he might cry at
+the pummelling, retorted with worse revenge of his own sort. And once or
+twice bystanders, seeing a deformed child thus treated, interfered with
+clouts on Dicky's ears. The victim, moreover, designed another
+retaliation. He would go to some bigger boy with a tale that Dicky had
+spoken vauntingly of fighting him and beating him hollow, with one hand.
+This brought the big boy after Dicky at once, with a hiding: except on
+some rare occasion when the hunchback rated his instrument of vengeance
+too high, and Dicky was able to beat him in truth. But this was a very
+uncommon mistake. And after this Dicky did not wait for specific
+provocation: he 'clumped' Bobby Roper, or rolled him in the gutter, as a
+matter of principle, whenever he could get hold of him.
+
+That afternoon Dicky had suffered again. Two days earlier, tea and cake
+had been provided by a benevolent manager for all who attended the
+school. Consequently the attendance was excellent, and included Dicky.
+But his attempt to secrete a pocketful of cake, to carry home for Em,
+was reported by Bobby Roper; and Dicky was hauled forth, deprived of his
+plunder, and expelled in disgrace. He waited outside and paid off the
+score fiercely, by the help of a very long and pliant cabbage stalk. But
+this afternoon Bill Bates, a boy a head taller than himself and two
+years older, had fallen on him suddenly in Lincoln Street, and, though
+Dicky fought desperately and kicked with much effect, had dealt him a
+thrashing that left him bruised, bleeding, dusty, and crying with rage
+and pain. This was the hunchback's doing, without a doubt. Dicky limped
+home, but was something comforted by an accident in Shoreditch High
+Street, whereby a coster's barrow-load of cough-drops was knocked over
+by a covered van, and the cough-drops were scattered in the mud. For
+while the carman and the coster flew at each other's name and address,
+and defamed each other's eyes and mother, Dicky gathered a handful of
+cough-drops, muddy, it is true, but easy to wipe. And so he made for
+home more cheerfully disposed: till the sight of the Ropers' old clock
+brought the hunchback to mind once more, and in bitter anger he resolved
+to search for him forthwith, and pass on the afternoon's hiding, with
+interest.
+
+As he emerged into the street, a hand was reached to catch him, which he
+dodged by instinct. He rushed back upstairs, and emptied his pockets,
+stowing away in a safe corner the rest of the cough-drops, the broken
+ruin he called his knife, some buttons and pieces of string, a bit of
+chalk, three little pieces of slate pencil and two marbles. Then he went
+down again into the street, confident in his destitution, and watched,
+forgetting the hunchback in the excitement of the spectacle.
+
+The loafers from the corners had conceived a sudden notion of
+co-operation, and had joined forces to the array of twenty or thirty.
+Confident in their numbers, they swept the street, stopping every
+passenger--man, woman or child--and emptying all pockets. A straggler on
+the outskirts of the crowd, a hobbledehoy like most of the rest, had
+snatched at but had lost Dicky, and was now busy, with four or five
+others, rolling a woman, a struggling heap of old clothes and skinny
+limbs, in the road. It was Biddy Flynn, too old and worn for anything
+but honest work, who sold oranges and nuts from a basket, and who had
+been caught on her way out for her evening's trade in High Street. She
+was a fortunate capture, being a lone woman with all her possessions
+about her. Under her skirt, and tied round her waist with string, she
+kept her money-bag; and it was soon found and dragged away, yielding two
+and eightpence farthing and a lucky shoe-tip, worn round and bright. She
+had, moreover, an old brass brooch; but unfortunately her wedding ring,
+worn to pin-wire, could not be got past the knotted knuckle--though it
+would have been worth little in any case. So Biddy Flynn, exhausted with
+plunging and screaming, was left, and her empty basket was flung at her.
+She staggered away, wailing and rolling her head, with her hand to the
+wall; and the gang, sharing out, sucked oranges with relish, and turned
+to fresh exploits. Dicky watched from the Jago Court passage.
+
+Business slackened for a little while, and the loafers were
+contemplating a raid in force on Mother Gapp's till, when a grown lad
+ran in pell-mell from Luck Row with a square parcel clipped under his
+arm--a parcel of aspect well known among the fat's a-running boys--a
+parcel that meant tobacco. He was collared at once.
+
+'Stow it, Bill!' he cried breathlessly, recognising his captor. 'The
+bloke's a-comin'!'
+
+But half-a-dozen hands were on his plunder, it was snatched away, and he
+was flung back on the flags. There was a clatter on the stones of Luck
+Row, and a light van came rattling into Old Jago Street, the horse
+galloping, the carman lashing and shouting:--'Stop 'im! Stop thief!'
+
+The sight was so novel that for a moment the gang merely stared and
+grinned. This man must be a greenhorn--new to the neighbourhood--to
+venture a load of goods up Luck Row. And it was tobacco, too. He was
+pale and flustered, and he called wildly, as he looked this way and
+that:--'A man's stole somethin' auf my van. Where's 'e gawn?'
+
+'No good, guv'nor,' cried one. 'The ball's stopped rollin'. You're lawst
+'im.'
+
+'My Gawd!' said the man, in a sweat, 'I'm done. There's two quid's worth
+o' 'bacca--an' I on'y got the job o' Monday--bin out nine munse!'
+
+'Was it a parcel like this 'ere?' asked another, chuckling, and lifting
+a second packet over the tailboard.
+
+'Yus--put it down! Gawd--wotcher up to? 'Ere--'elp! 'elp!'
+
+The gang were over the van, guffawing and flinging out the load. The
+carman yelled aloud, and fought desperately with his whip--Bill Hanks
+is near blind of an eye now from one cut; but he was the worse for it.
+For he was knocked off the van in a heap, and, as he lay, they cleared
+his pockets, and pulled off his boots; those that had caught the sting
+of the whip kicking him about the head till it but shifted in the slime
+at the stroke, an inanimate lump.
+
+There was talk of how to deal with the horse and van. To try to sell
+them was too large a job, and too risky. So, as it was growing dusk, the
+senseless carman was put on the floor of the van, the tailboard was
+raised, and one of the gang led the horse away, to lose the whole thing
+in the busy streets.
+
+Here was a big haul, and many of the crowd busied themselves in getting
+it out of sight, and scouting out among the fences to arrange sales.
+Those who remained grew less active, and hung at the corner of Luck Row,
+little more than an ordinary corner-group of loafers.
+
+Then Dicky remembered the hunchback, and slouched off to Dove Lane. But
+he could see nothing of Bobby Roper. The Jago and Dove Lane were
+districts ever at feud, active or smouldering, save for brief intervals
+of ostentatious reconciliation, serving to render the next attack on
+Dove Lane the more savage--for invariably the Jagos were aggressors and
+victors. Dicky was careful in his lurkings, therefore: lest he should be
+recognised and set upon by more Dove Lane boys than would be convenient.
+He knew where the Ropers lived, and he went and hung about the door.
+Once he fancied he could hear a disjointed tinkle, as of a music-box
+grown infirm, but he was not sure of it. And in the end he contented
+himself, for the present, with flinging a stone through the Ropers'
+window, and taking to his heels.
+
+The Jago was black with night, the rats came and went, and the
+cosh-carriers lurked on landings. On a step, Pigeony Poll, drunk because
+of a little gin and no food, sang hideously and wept. The loafers had
+dispersed to spend their afternoon's makings. The group which Dicky had
+left by Luck Row corner, indeed, had been discouraged early in the
+evening in consequence of an attempt at 'turning over' old Beveridge, as
+he unsuspectingly stalked among them, in from his city round. For the
+old man whipped out his case-knife and drove it into the flesh of Nobber
+Sugg's arm, at the shoulder--stabbed, too, at another, and ripped his
+coat. So Nobber Sugg, with blood streaming through his sleeve, went off
+with two more to tie up the arm; and old Beveridge, grinning and
+mumbling fiercely, strode about the street, knife in hand, for ten
+minutes, ere he grew calm enough to go his way. This Tommy Rann told
+Dicky, sitting in the back-yard and smoking a pipe; a pipe charged with
+tobacco pillaged from a tin-full which his father had bought, at about
+fourpence a pound, from a loafer. And both boys crawled indoors deadly
+sick.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+Josh Perrott was at church on Sunday morning, as Father Sturt had bid
+him. Not because of the bidding, but because the vicar overtook him and
+Kiddo Cook in Meakin Street, and hauled them in, professing to be much
+gratified at their punctuality, and charging them never to fall away
+from the habit. The two Jagos, with dubious grins, submitted as they
+must, and were in a little while surprised to find others arriving,
+friends and acquaintances never suspected of church-going. The fact was,
+that Father Sturt, by dint of long effort, had so often brought so many
+to his stable-church, as he had now brought Josh and Kiddo, that the
+terrors and embarrassments of the place had worn off, and many, finding
+nothing more attractive elsewhere, would make occasional attendances of
+their own motion. Wet Sundays, particularly, inclined them to church:
+where there might be a fire, where at least there was a clean room, with
+pictures on the wall, where there were often flowers, where there was
+always music, and where Father Sturt made an address of a quarter of an
+hour, which nobody ever suspected of being a sermon; an address which
+one might doze over or listen to, as one might be disposed; but which
+most listened to, more or less, partly because of an uneasy feeling that
+Father Sturt would know if they did not, and partly because it was very
+easy to understand, was not oppressively minatory, was spoken with an
+intimate knowledge of themselves, and was, indeed, something of a
+refreshing novelty, being the simple talk of a gentleman.
+
+Josh Perrott and Kiddo Cook were not altogether sorry they had come. It
+was a rest. Stable though it had been, they had never sat in so pleasant
+a room before. There was nothing to do, no constant watch to be kept, no
+police to avoid, and their wits had a holiday. They forgot things. Their
+courage never rose so high as to build the thought; but in truth pipes
+would have made them happy.
+
+The address being done, Father Sturt announced the purchase of the site
+for the new church, and briefly described his scheme. He would give
+tenants good notice, he said, before the houses were destroyed.
+Meantime, they must pay rent; though most of the amounts would be
+reduced.
+
+And after the benediction, Father Sturt, from his window over the closed
+shop, saw Josh Perrott and Kiddo Cook guffawing and elbowing one another
+up Luck Row. Each was accusing the other of having tried to sing.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+There was much talk of Father Sturt's announcement. Many held it a shame
+that so much money, destined for the benefit of the Jago, should be
+spent in bricks and mortar, instead of being distributed among
+themselves. They fell to calculating the price of the land and houses,
+and to working it out laboriously in the denomination of pots and
+gallons. More: it was felt to be a grave social danger that Jago Court
+should be extinguished. What would become of the Jago without Jago
+Court? Where would Sunday morning be spent? Where would the fights come
+off, and where was so convenient a place for pitch and toss? But mainly
+they feared the police. Jago Court was an unfailing sanctuary, a city of
+refuge ever ready, ever secure. There were times when two or three of
+the police, hot in the chase, would burst into the Jago at the heels of
+a flying marauder. Then the runaway would make straight for the archway,
+and, once he was in Jago Court, danger was over. For he had only to run
+into one of the ever-open doors at right or left, and out into
+back-yards and other houses; or, better, to scramble over the low fence
+opposite, through the back door before him, and so into New Jago Street.
+Beyond the archway the police could not venture, except in large
+companies. A young constable who tried it once, getting ahead of two
+companions in his ardour, was laid low as he emerged from the passage,
+by a fire-grate adroitly let drop from an upper window.
+
+The blotting out of such a godsend of a place as this would be a
+calamity. The Jago would never be the same again. As it was, the Old
+Jago was a very convenient, comfortable sort of place, they argued. They
+could not imagine themselves living anywhere else. But assuredly it
+would be the Jago no longer without Jago Court. And this thing was to be
+done, too, with money got together for their benefit! The sole
+explanation the Jago could supply was the one that at last, with
+arithmetical variations, prevailed. The landlords were to be paid a sum
+(varying in Jago estimation from a hundred pounds to a hundred thousand)
+for the houses and the ground, and of this they were secretly to return
+to Father Sturt a certain share (generally agreed on as half), as his
+private fee for bringing about so desirable a transaction. Looked at
+from all points, this appeared to be the most plausible explanation: for
+no other could reasonably account for Father Sturt's activity. No wonder
+he could afford to reduce some of the rents! Was he not already
+receiving princely wages (variously supposed to be something from ten
+pounds to thirty pounds a week) from the Government, for preaching every
+Sunday?
+
+Still the rents were to be reduced: that was the immediate
+consideration, and nothing but an immediate consideration carried weight
+in the Jago, where a shilling to-day was to be preferred to a constant
+income beginning in a month's time. The first effect of the announcement
+was a rush of applications for rooms in the doomed houses, each
+applicant demanding to be accommodated by the eviction of somebody
+already established, but now disinterestedly discovered to be a bad
+tenant. They were all disappointed, but the residents had better luck
+than they had hoped. For the unexpected happened, and the money for a
+part of the new buildings was suddenly guaranteed. Wherefore Father
+Sturt, knowing that many would be hard put to it to find shelter when
+the houses came down, and guessing that rents would rise with the
+demand, determined to ask none for the little while the tenements
+endured. Scarce had he made his decision known ere he regretted it,
+popular as it was. For he reflected that the money saved would merely
+melt, and that at the inevitable turning out, not a soul would be the
+better off for the relief, but, indeed, might find it harder than ever
+to pay rent after the temporary easement. It would have been better
+rigidly to exact the rent, and return it in lump to each tenant as he
+left. The sum would have been an inducement to leave peaceably--a matter
+in which trouble was to be expected. But then, what did any windfall of
+shillings bring in the Jago? What but a drunk? This was one of Father
+Sturt's thousand perplexities, and he could but hope that, perhaps, he
+had done right after all.
+
+The old buildings were sold, as they stood, to the house-wreckers, and
+on the house-wreckers devolved the work of getting the lodgers out. For
+weeks the day was deferred, but it drew very near at last, and a tall
+hoarding was put up. Next morning it had vanished; but there was a loud
+crackling where the Jagos boiled their pots; Dicky Perrott and Tommy
+Rann had a bonfire in Edge Lane; and Jerry Gullen's canary sweated
+abroad before a heavy load of cheap firewood.
+
+Then Josh Perrott and Billy Leary, his old enemy, were appointed joint
+guardians of the new hoarding, each to get half-a-crown on every morning
+when the fence was found intact. And in the end there came eviction day,
+and once more the police held the Jago in force, escorting gangs of men
+with tumbrils.
+
+As for the Perrotts, they could easily find another room, at the high
+rent always charged for the privilege of residence in the Jago. To have
+remained in one room four or five years, and to have paid rent with
+indifferent good regularity was a feat sufficiently rare to be
+notorious, and to cause way to be made for them wherever a room was
+falling vacant, or could be emptied. They went no farther than across
+the way, to a room wherein a widow had died over her sack-making two
+days before, and had sat on the floor with her head between her knees
+for hours, while her children, not understanding, cried that they were
+hungry. These children were now gone to the workhouse: more fortunate
+than the many they left behind. And the room was a very fair one, ten
+feet square or so.
+
+The rest of the tenants thought not at all of new quarters, and did
+nothing to find them, till they found themselves and their belongings
+roofless in Old Jago Street. Then with one accord they demanded lodgings
+of the vicar. Most of them had never inhabited any rooms so long as they
+had these which they must now leave--having been ejected again and
+again because of unpaid rent. Nevertheless, they clamoured for redress
+as they might have clamoured had they never changed dwellings in their
+lives.
+
+Nobody resisted the police; for there were too many of them. Moreover,
+Father Sturt was there, and few had hardihood for any but their best
+behaviour in his presence. Still, there were disputes among the Jagos
+themselves, that sometimes came very near to fights. Ginger Stagg's
+missis professed to recognise a long-lost property in a tin kettle
+brought into the outer air among the belongings of Mrs Walsh. The
+miscellaneous rags and sticks that were Cocko Harnwell's household goods
+got mingled in the roadway with those appertaining to the Fishers; and
+their assortment without a turn of family combat was a task which tried
+the vicar's influence to the utmost. Mrs Rafferty, too, was suspected of
+undue pride in a cranky deal wash-stand, and thereby of a disposition to
+sneer at the humbler turn-out of the Regans from the next floor: giving
+occasion for a shrill and animated row.
+
+The weather was dry, fortunately, and the evicted squatted in the
+roadway, by their heaps, or on them, squabbling and lamenting. Ginger
+Stagg, having covered certain crockery with the old family mattress,
+forgetfully sat on it, and came upon Father Sturt with an indignant
+demand for compensation.
+
+Father Sturt's efforts to stimulate a search for new lodgings met with
+small success at first. It was felt that, no doubt, there were lodgings
+to be had, but they would be open to the fatal objection of costing
+something; and the Jago temperament could neither endure nor understand
+payment for what had once been given for nothing. Father Sturt, the
+Jagos argued, had given them free quarters for so long. Then why should
+he stop now? If they cleared out in order to make room for his new
+church, in common fairness he should find them similar lodging on the
+same terms. So they sat and waited for him to do it.
+
+At length the vicar set to work with them in good earnest, carried away
+with him a family or two at a time, and inducted them to rooms of his
+own finding. And hereat others, learning that in these cases rent in
+advance was exacted, bestirred themselves: reflecting that if rent must
+be paid they might as well choose their own rooms as take those that
+Father Sturt might find. Of course the thing was not done without
+payments from the vicar's pocket. Some were wholly destitute; others
+could not muster enough to pay that advance of rent which alone could
+open a Jago tenancy. Distinguishing the genuine impecuniosity from the
+merely professed, with the insight that was now a sixth sense with him,
+Father Sturt helped sparingly and in secret; for a precedent of
+almsgiving was an evil thing in the Jago, confirming the shiftlessness
+which was already a piece of Jago nature, and setting up long affliction
+for the almsgiver. Enough of such precedents existed; and the inevitable
+additions thereto were a work of anxious responsibility and jealous
+care.
+
+So the bivouac in Old Jago Street melted away. For one thing, there were
+those among the dispossessed who would not waste time in unproductive
+inactivity just then; for war had arisen with Dove Lane, and spoils were
+going. Dove Lane was no very reputable place, but it was not like the
+Jago. In the phrase of the district, the Dove Laners were pretty thick,
+but the Jagos were thick as glue. There were many market-porters among
+the Dove Laners, and at this, their prosperous season, they and their
+friends resorted to a shop in Meakin Street, kept by an 'ikey' tailor,
+there to buy the original out-and-out downy benjamins, or the celebrated
+bang-up kicksies, cut saucy, with artful buttons and a double fakement
+down the sides. And hereabout they were apt to be set upon by Jagos;
+overthrown by superior numbers; bashed; and cleaned out. Or, if the
+purchases had been made, they were flimped of their kicksies, benjies or
+daisies, as the case might be. So that a fight with Dove Lane might be
+an affair of some occasional profit; and it became no loyal Jago to idle
+in the stronghold.
+
+Father Sturt's task was nearly over, when, returning to Old Jago Street,
+he saw Dicky Perrott sitting by a still-remaining heap--a heap small and
+poor even among those others. The Perrotts had been decorously settled
+in their new home since early morning; but here was Dicky, guarding a
+heap with a baby on it, and absorbed in the weaving of rush bags.
+
+'That's right, Dicky my boy,' said Father Sturt in the approving voice
+that a Jago would do almost anything--except turn honest--to hear. And
+Dicky, startled, looked up, flushed and happy, over his shoulder.
+
+'Rush bags, eh?' the vicar went on, stooping and handing Dicky another
+rush from the heap. 'And whose are they?'
+
+The bags, the rushes, the heap, and the baby belonged to Mrs Bates, the
+widow, who was now in search of a new room. Dicky had often watched the
+weaving of fishmongers' frails, and, since it was work in which he had
+had no opportunity of indulging, it naturally struck him as a
+fascinating pastime. So that he was delighted by the chance which he had
+taken, and Mrs Bates, for her part, was not sorry to find somebody to
+mind her property. Moreover, by hard work and the skill begot of much
+practice, she was able to earn a sum of some three farthings an hour at
+the rush bags: a profit which her cupidity made her reluctant to lose,
+for even half an hour. And thus to have Dicky carry on the business--and
+in his enthusiasm he did it very well--was a further consideration.
+
+Father Sturt chatted with Dicky till the boy could scarce plait for very
+pride. Would not Dicky like to work regularly every day, asked Father
+Sturt, and earn wages? Dicky could see no graceful answer but the
+affirmative; and in sober earnest he thought he would. Father Sturt took
+hold of Dicky's vanity. Was he not capable of something better than
+other Jago boys? Why should he not earn regular wages, and live
+comfortably, well fed and clothed, with no fear of the police, and no
+shame for what he did? _He_ might do it, when others could not. They
+were not clever enough. They called themselves 'clever' and 'wide;'
+'but,' said Father Sturt, 'is there one of them that can deceive me?'
+And Dicky knew there was not one. Most did no work, the vicar's argument
+went on, because they had neither the pluck to try nor the intelligence
+to accomplish. Else why did they live the wretched Jago life instead of
+take the pleasanter time of the decent labourer?
+
+Dicky, already zealous at work as exampled in rush bag-making, listened
+with wistful pride. Yes, if he could, he would work and take his place
+over the envious heads of his Jago friends. But how? Nobody would employ
+a boy living in the Jago. That was notorious. The address was a
+topsy-turvy testimonial for miles round.
+
+All the same when Mrs Bates at last took away her belongings, Dicky ran
+off in delighted amaze to tell his mother and Em that he was going to
+tea at Father Sturt's rooms.
+
+And the wreckers tore down the foul old houses, laying bare the secret
+dens of a century of infamy; lifting out the wide sashes of the old
+'weavers' windows'--the one good feature in the structures; letting
+light and air at last into the subterraneous basements where men and
+women had swarmed, and bred, and died, like wolves in their lairs; and
+emerging from clouds of choking dust, each man a colony of vermin. But
+there were rooms which the wreckers--no jack-a-dandies neither--flatly
+refused to enter; and nothing would make them but much coaxing, the
+promise of extra pay, and the certainty of much immediate beer.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Mr Grinder kept a shop in the Bethnal Green Road. It was announced in
+brilliant lettering as an 'oil, colour and Italian warehouse,' and
+there, in addition to the oil and the colour, and whatever of Italian
+there might have been, he sold pots, pans, kettles, brooms, shovels,
+mops, lamps, nails, and treacle. It was a shop ever too tight for its
+stock, which burst forth at every available opening, and heaped so high
+on the paving that the window was half buried in a bank of shining tin.
+Father Sturt was one of the best customers: the oil, candles and
+utensils needed for church and club all coming from Mr Grinder's. Mr
+Grinder was losing his shop-boy, who had found a better situation; and
+Father Sturt determined that, could but the oil-man be persuaded, Dicky
+Perrott should be the new boy. Mr Grinder was persuaded. Chiefly
+perhaps, because the vicar undertook to make good the loss, should the
+experiment end in theft; partly because it was policy to oblige a good
+customer; and partly, indeed, because Mr Grinder was willing to give
+such a boy a chance in life, for he was no bad fellow, as
+oil-and-colourmen go, and had been an errand boy himself.
+
+So that there came a Monday morning when Dicky, his clothes as well
+mended as might be (for Hannah Perrott, no more than another Jago, could
+disobey Father Sturt), and a cut-down apron of his mother's tied before
+him, stood by Mr Grinder's bank of pots and kettles, in an eager agony
+to sell something, and near blind with the pride of the thing. He had
+been waiting at the shop-door long ere Mr Grinder was out of bed; and
+now, set to guard the outside stock--a duty not to be neglected in that
+neighbourhood--he brushed a tin pot here and there with his sleeve, and
+longed for some Jago friend to pass and view him in his new greatness.
+The goods he watched over were an unfailing source of interest; and he
+learned by much repetition the prices of all the saucepans, painted in
+blue distemper on the tin, and ranging from eightpence-halfpenny, on the
+big pots in the bottom row, to three-halfpence on the very little ones
+at the top. And there were long ranks of little paraffin lamps at a
+penny--the sort that had set fire to a garret in Half Jago Street a
+month since, and burnt old Mother Leary to a greasy cinder. With a
+smaller array of a superior quality at fourpence-halfpenny--just like
+the one that had burst at Jerry Gullen's, and burnt the bed. While over
+his head swung doormats at one-and-eightpence, with penny mousetraps
+dangling from their corners.
+
+When he grew more accustomed to his circumstances, he bethought him to
+collect a little dirt, and rub it down the front of his apron, to give
+himself a well-worked and business-like appearance; and he greatly
+impeded women who looked at the saucepans and the mousetraps, ere they
+entered the shop, by his anxiety to cut them off from Mr Grinder and
+serve them himself. He remembered the boy at the toy-shop in Bishopsgate
+Street, years ago, who had chased him through Spitalfields; and he
+wished that some lurching youngster would snatch a mousetrap, that he
+might make a chase himself.
+
+At Mr Grinder's every call Dicky was prompt and willing; for every new
+duty was a fresh delight, and the whole day a prolonged game of real
+shopkeeping. And at his tea--he was to have tea each day in addition to
+three and sixpence every Saturday--he took scarce five minutes. There
+was a trolley--just such a thing as porters used at railway stations,
+but smaller--which was his own particular implement, his own to pack
+parcels on for delivery to such few customers as did not carry away
+their own purchases: and to acquire the dexterous management of this
+trolley was a pure joy. He bolted his tea to start the sooner on a
+trolley-journey to a public-house two hundred yards away.
+
+His enthusiasm for work as an amusement cooled in a day or two, but all
+his pride in it remained. The fight with Dove Lane waxed amain, but
+Dicky would not be tempted into more than a distant interest in it. In
+his day-dreams he saw himself a tradesman, with a shop of his own and
+the name 'R. Perrott,' with a gold flourish, over the door. He would
+employ a boy himself then; and there would be a parlour, with
+stuff-bottomed chairs and a shade of flowers, and Em grown up and
+playing on the piano. Truly Father Sturt was right: the hooks were
+fools, and the straight game was the better.
+
+Bobby Roper, the hunchback, went past the shop once, and saw him. Dicky,
+minding his new dignity, ignored his enemy, and for the first time for a
+year and more, allowed him to pass without either taunt or blow. The
+other, astonished at Dicky's new occupation, came back and back again,
+staring, from a safe distance, at Dicky and the shop. Dicky, on his
+part, took no more notice than to assume an ostentatious vigilance: so
+that the hunchback, baring his teeth in a snigger of malice, at last
+turned on his heel and rolled off.
+
+Twice Kiddo Cook passed, but made no sign of recognition beyond a wink;
+and Dicky felt grateful for Kiddo's obvious fear of compromising him.
+Once old Beveridge came by, striding rapidly, his tatters flying, and
+the legend 'Hard Up' chalked on his hat, as was his manner in his town
+rambles. He stopped abruptly at sight of Dicky, stooped, and
+said:--'Dicky Perrott? Hum--hum--hey?' Then he hurried on, doubtless
+conceiving just such a fear as Kiddo Cook's. As for Tommy Rann, his
+affections were alienated by Dicky's outset refusal to secrete treacle
+in a tin mug for a midnight carouse; and he did not show himself. So
+matters went for near a week.
+
+But Mr Weech missed Dicky sadly. It was rare for a day to pass without a
+visit from Dicky, and Dicky had a way of bringing good things. Mr Weech
+would not have sold Dicky's custom for ten shillings a week. So that
+when Mr Weech inquired, and found that Dicky was at work in an oil-shop,
+he was naturally annoyed. Moreover, if Dicky Perrott got into _that_ way
+of life, he would have no fear for himself, and might get talking
+inconveniently among his new friends about the business affairs of Mr
+Aaron Weech. And at this reflection that philanthropist grew
+thoughtful.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+Dicky had gone on an errand, and Mr Grinder was at the shop door, when
+there appeared before him a whiskered and smirking figure, with a quick
+glance each way along the street, and a long and smiling one at the
+oil-man's necktie.
+
+'Good mornin', Mr Grinder, good mornin' sir.' Mr Weech stroked his left
+palm with his right fist and nodded pleasantly. 'I'm in business meself,
+over in Meakin Street--name of Weech: p'r'aps you know the shop? I--I
+jist 'opped over to ask'--Grinder led the way into the shop--'to ask
+(so's to make things quite sure y'know, though no doubt it's all right)
+to ask if it's correct you're awfferin' brass roastin'-jacks at a
+shillin' each.'
+
+'Brass roastin'-jacks at a shillin'?' exclaimed Grinder, shocked at the
+notion. 'Why, no!'
+
+Mr Weech appeared mildly surprised. 'Nor yut seven-poun' jars o' jam an'
+pickles at sixpence?' he pursued, with his eye on those ranged behind
+the counter.
+
+'No!'
+
+'Nor doormats at fourpence?'
+
+'Fourpence? Cert'nly not!'
+
+Mr Weech's face fell into a blank perplexity. He pawed his ear with a
+doubtful air, murmuring absently:--'Well I'm sure 'e _said_ fourpence:
+an' sixpence for pickles, an' bring 'em round after the shop was shut.
+But there', he added, more briskly, 'there's no 'arm done, an' no doubt
+it's a mistake.' He turned as though to leave, but Grinder restrained
+him.
+
+'But look 'ere,' he said, 'I want to know about this. Wotjer mean? _'Oo_
+was goin' to bring round pickles after the shop was shut? _'Oo_ said
+fourpence for doormats?'
+
+'Oh, I expect it's jest a little mistake, that's all,' answered Weech,
+making another motion toward the door; 'an' I don't want to git nobody
+into trouble.'
+
+'Trouble? Nice trouble I'd be in if I sold brass smoke-jacks for a bob!
+There's somethink 'ere as I ought to know about. Tell me about it
+straight.'
+
+Weech looked thoughtfully at the oil-man's top waistcoat button for a
+few seconds, and then said:--'Yus, p'raps I better. I can feel for you,
+Mr Grinder, 'avin' a feelin' 'art, an' bein' in business meself. Where's
+your boy?'
+
+'Gawn out.'
+
+'Comin' back soon?'
+
+'Not yut. Come in the back-parlour.'
+
+There Mr Weech, with ingenuous reluctance, assured Mr Grinder that Dicky
+Perrott had importuned him to buy the goods in question at the prices he
+had mentioned, together with others--readily named now that the oil-man
+swallowed so freely--and that they were to be delivered and paid for at
+night when Dicky left work. But perhaps, Mr Weech concluded, parading an
+obstinate belief in human nature, perhaps the boy, being new to the
+business, had mistaken the prices, and was merely doing his best to push
+his master's trade.
+
+'No fear o' that,' said Grinder, shaking his head gloomily. 'Not the
+least fear o' that. 'E knows the cheapest doormats I got's one an'
+six--I 'eard him tell customers so outside a dozen times; an' anyone can
+see the smoke-jacks is ticketed five an 'nine'--as Mr Weech had seen,
+when he spoke of them. 'I thought that boy was too eager an' willin' to
+be quite genavin,' Dicky's master went on. ''E ain't 'ad me yut, that's
+one comfort: if anythin' 'ud bin gawn I'd 'a' missed it. But out 'e goes
+as soon as 'e comes back: you can take yer davy o' that!'
+
+'Ah,' replied Mr Weech, 'it's fearful the wickedness there is about,
+ain't it? It's enough to break yer 'art. Sich a neighb'r'ood, too! Wy,
+if it was known as I'd give you this 'ere little friendly information,
+bein' in business meself an' knowin' wot it is, my life wouldn't be safe
+a hower. It wouldn't, Mr Grinder.'
+
+'Wouldn't it?' said Mr Grinder. 'You mean them in the Jago, I s'pose.'
+
+'Yus. They're a awful lot, Mr Grinder--you've no idear. The father o'
+this 'ere boy as I've warned you aginst, 'e's in with a desprit gang,
+an' they'd murder me if they thought I'd come an' told you honest, w'en
+you might 'a' bin robbed, as is my nature to. They would indeed. So o'
+course you won't say wot I toldjer, nor 'oo give you this 'ere
+honourable friendly warnin'--not to nobody.'
+
+'That's awright,' answered the simple Grinder, 'I won't let on. But out
+'e goes, promp'. I'm obliged to ye, Mr Weech. Er--r wot'll ye take?'
+
+Weech put away the suggestion with a virtuous palm:--'Nothink at all, Mr
+Grinder, thanks all the same. I never touch nothink; an' I'm glad to--to
+do any moral job, so to speak, as comes in my way. 'Scatter seeds o'
+kindness' you know, as the--the Psalm says, Mr Grinder. Your boy ain't
+back, is 'e?'
+
+And after peering cautiously, Mr Weech went his way.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+Dicky completed his round, and pushed his unladen trolley Grinder-ward
+with a fuller sense of responsibility than ever. For he carried money. A
+publican had paid him four and threepence, and he had taken two and
+tenpence elsewhere. He had left his proud signature, pencilled large and
+black, on two receipts, and he stopped in a dozen doorways to count the
+money over again, and make sure that all was right. Between the halts he
+added four and three to two and ten mentally, and proved his sum correct
+by subtracting each in turn from seven and a penny. And at last he stood
+his trolley on end by the bank of saucepans, and entered the shop.
+
+'Walker's is paid, an' Wilkins is paid,' said Dicky, putting down the
+money. 'Two an' ten an' four an' three's seven an' a penny.'
+
+Mr Grinder looked steadily and sourly at Dicky, and counted. He pitched
+the odd penny into the till and shook the rest of the coins in his
+closed hand, still staring moodily in the boy's face. 'It's three an'
+six a week you come 'ere at,' he said.
+
+'Yus sir,' Dicky replied, since Grinder seemed to expect an answer. The
+supreme moment when he should take his first wages had been the week's
+beacon to him, reddening and brightening as Saturday night grew nearer.
+
+'Three an' six a week an' yer tea.'
+
+Dicky wondered.
+
+'So as if I found out anythink about--say Brass Roastin'-jacks for
+instance--I could give ye yer three an' six an' start y' auf, unless I
+did somethin' wuss.'
+
+Dicky was all incomprehension; but something made him feel a little
+sick.
+
+'But s'posin' I _didn't_ find out anythink about--say Seven-pun' Jars o'
+Pickles--an' s'pose I wasn't disposed to suspect anythink in regard
+to--say Doormats; then I could either give ye a week s notice or pay y'
+a week's money an' clear y' out on the spot, without no more trouble.'
+
+Mr Grinder paused, and still looked at Dicky with calm dislike. Then he
+added, as though in answer to himself, 'Yus.' ...
+
+He dropped the money slowly from his right hand to his left. Dicky's
+mouth was dry, and the drawers and pickle-jars swam before him at each
+side of Grinder's head. What did it mean?
+
+''Ere y' are,' cried Mr Grinder, with sudden energy, thrusting his hand
+across the counter. 'Two three-and-sixes is seven shillin's, an' you can
+git yer tea at 'ome with yer dirty little sister. Git out o' my shop!'
+
+Dicky's hand closed mechanically on the money, and after a second's
+pause, he found broken speech. 'W--w--wot for, sir?' he asked, huskily.
+'I ain't done nothink!'
+
+'No, an' you sha'n't do nothink, that's more. Out ye go! If I see ye
+near the place agin I'll 'ave ye locked up!'
+
+Dicky slunk to the door. He felt the sobs coming, but he turned at the
+threshold and said with tremulous lips:--'Woncher gimme a chance, sir?
+S'elp me, I done me best. I--'
+
+Mr Grinder made a short rush from the back of the shop, and Dicky gave
+up and fled.
+
+It was all over. There could never be a shop with 'R. Perrott' painted
+over it, now; there would be no parlour with stuff-bottomed chairs and a
+piano for Em to play. He was cut off from the trolley for ever. Dicky
+was thirteen, and at that age the children of the Jago were past
+childish tears; but tears he could not smother, even till he might find
+a hiding-place: they burst out shamefully in the open street.
+
+He took dark turnings, and hid his head in doorways. It was very bitter.
+At last, when the sobs grew fewer, he remembered the money gripped in
+his wet fist. It was a consolation. Seven shillings was a vast sum in
+Dicky's eyes; until that day he had never handled so much in his life.
+It would have been handsome recompense, he thought, for any trouble in
+the world but this. He must take it home, of course; it might avail to
+buy sympathy of his father and mother. But then, to think he might have
+had as much every fortnight of his life, a good tea every day, and the
+proud responsibility, and the trolley! At this his lips came awry again,
+his eyes sought his sleeve, and he turned to another doorway.
+
+His glance fell on the white apron, now smudged and greased in good
+earnest. It made him feel worse; so he untied it and stuffed it away
+under his jacket. He wondered vaguely what had occurred to irritate Mr
+Grinder, and why he talked of pickles and doormats; but the sorrow of it
+all afflicted him to the extinction of such minor speculation. And in
+this misery he dragged his reluctant feet toward the Old Jago.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+He handed his father the seven shillings, and received a furious belting
+for losing his situation. He cried quietly, but it was not because of
+the strap. All he feared now was to meet Father Sturt. He had rather
+fifty beltings than Father Sturt's reproaches; and, having disgraced
+himself with Mr Grinder in some mysterious way which it was beyond his
+capacity to understand, what but reproaches could he expect from the
+vicar? The whole world was against him. As for himself, he was hopeless:
+plainly he must have some incomprehensible defect of nature, since he
+offended, do as he might, and could neither understand nor redeem his
+fault. He wondered if it had been so with little Neddy Wright, who had
+found the world too ruthless for him at ten; and had tied a brick to
+his neck, as he had seen done with needless dogs, and let himself
+timidly down into the canal at Haggerstone Bridge.
+
+So he shuffled through Jago Row, when a hand came on his shoulder and a
+hoarse voice said:--'Wot's the matter, Dicky?'
+
+He turned, and saw the mild, coarse face of Pigeony Poll, the jaw
+whereof was labouring on something tough and sticky. Poll pulled from
+her pocket a glutinous paper, clinging about a cohesive lump of broken
+toffee--the one luxury of her moneyed times. ''Ave a bit,' she said.
+'Wot's the matter?'
+
+But Dicky thrust the hand away and fled, for he feared another burst of
+tears. His eyes were bad enough as it was, and he longed to hide himself
+in some hole.
+
+He turned into New Jago Street. Hither it was that Jerry Gullen had
+betaken himself with his family and the Canary, after the great
+eviction. Dicky slackened his pace, loitered at Jerry's doorway, and
+presently found himself in the common passage. It was long since he had
+had a private interview with Jerry Gullen's canary: for, indeed, he was
+thirteen--he was no longer a child, in fact!--and it was not well that
+he should indulge in such foolish weakness. Nevertheless he went as far
+as the back door. There stood the old donkey, mangy and infirm as ever,
+but apparently no nearer the end. The wood of the fence was bitten in
+places, but it was not as yet gnawed to the general whiteness and
+roundness of that in Canary's old abode. Canary, indeed, was fortunate
+to-day, for at the sound of Dicky's step he lifted his nose from a small
+heap of straw, dust, and mouldy hay, swept into a corner. Dicky stepped
+into the yard, and put his hand on Canary's neck; presently he glanced
+guiltily at the windows above. Nobody was looking. And in five minutes
+Dicky, aged as he was, had told Canary his troubles, while new tears
+wetted the ragged crest and dropped into the dusty straw.
+
+Now his grief lost some of its edge. Ashamed as he was, he had a
+shapeless, unapprehended notion that Canary was the sole creature alive
+that could understand and feel with him. And Canary poked his nose under
+the old jacket and sniffed in sympathy, as the broken lining tickled
+him. Dicky's intellectuals began to arrange themselves. Plainly, Mr
+Weech's philosophy was right after all. He was of the Jago, and he must
+prey on the outer world, as all the Jago did; not stray foolishly off
+the regular track in chase of visions, and fall headlong. Father Sturt
+was a creature of another mould. Who was he, Dicky Perrott, that he
+should break away from the Jago habit, and strain after another nature?
+What could come of it but defeat and bitterness? As old Beveridge had
+said, the Jago had got him. Why should he fight against the inevitable,
+and bruise himself? The ways out of the Jago old Beveridge had told him,
+years ago. Gaol, the gallows and the High Mob. There was his chance, his
+aspiration, his goal: the High Mob. To dream of oil-shops or regular
+wages was foolishness. His bed was made in the Jago, and he must lie on
+it. His hope in life, if he might have a hope at all, was to be of the
+High Mob. Spare nobody, stop at nothing, do his devilmost: old Beveridge
+had said that years ago. The task was before him, and he must not balk
+at it. As for gaol and the gallows, well! There they were, and he could
+not help it; ill ways out of the Jago, both, but still--ways out.
+
+He rubbed his face carefully with his sleeve, put away his foolish
+ambitions, and went forth with a brave heart: to accomplish his destiny
+for well or ill,--a Jago rat. To do his devilmost. But to avoid Father
+Sturt.
+
+Out he went into Shoreditch High Street, and there he prowled the
+evening away; there and in Norton Folgate. But he touched for
+nothing--nothing at all. He feared lest his week's honesty had damaged
+his training. Even an apple on a stall he failed at, and had to run. And
+then he turned into Bethnal Green Road.
+
+But here a thought checked him suddenly. What of Mr Grinder? He had
+threatened to have Dicky locked up if he came near the shop again. But a
+child of the Jago knew too much to be frightened by such a threat as
+that. He went on. He felt interested to see how his late employer was
+getting along without him, and who was minding the goods outside the
+shop. Probably there was nobody: and this gave Dicky an idea.
+
+He had forgotten his smudgy apron, folded and tucked away in the lining
+of his jacket. Now he pulled it out, and fastened it before him once
+more. He knew Mr Grinder's habits in the shop, and if he could seize a
+fitting opportunity he might be able, attired in his apron, to pick up
+or reach down any article that struck his fancy, fearless of
+interference from passers-by; for he would seem to be still shop-boy.
+
+With that he hastened, for it was near closing time at Grinder's. He
+took the opposite side of the road, the better to observe unseen in the
+darkness. But Mr Grinder had already begun to carry things in from the
+pavement. As Dicky looked he came out with a long pole wherewith he
+unhooked from above a clattering cluster of pails and watering pots, and
+a bunch of doormats. The doormats he let fall on the flags, while he
+carried in the pots and pails. Dicky knew that these pots and pails were
+kept at night in a shed behind the house; so he scuttled across the
+road, opening the blade of his old knife as he ran. He cut the string
+that held the mats together, selected a thick one, rolled it under his
+arm, and edged off into the shadow. Then he ran quietly across to the
+nearest turning.
+
+Presently Mr Grinder came out, hooked his finger in the string among the
+mats, and pulled up nothing. He stooped, and saw that the string was
+cut. He looked about him suspiciously, flung the mats over, and counted
+them. Then he stood erect; stared up the street, down the street, and
+across the road, with his mouth open; and made short rushes left and
+right into the gloom. Then he returned to the mats and scratched his
+head. Finally, he gave another glance about the street, picked up the
+mats in his arms and carried them in, counting them as he went. And, the
+mats bestowed, whenever he came forth for a fresh armful of saucepans,
+he stood and gazed doubtfully, now this way, now that, about the Bethnal
+Green Road.
+
+Mr Aaron Weech was pushing his last shutter into its place when 'Clean
+the knives,' said Dicky Perrott, in perfunctory repetition of the old
+formula.
+
+Mr Weech seemed taken aback. 'Wot, that?' he asked, doubtfully, pointing
+at the doormat. Then, after a sharp look about the almost deserted
+street, he ran to Jago Row corner, twenty yards away, and looked down
+there. Nobody was hiding, and he came back. He led the way into the
+shop, and closed the door. Then, looking keenly in Dicky's face, he
+suddenly asked,--''Oo toldjer to bring that 'ere?'
+
+'Told me?' Dicky answered sullenly. 'Nobody told me. Don'cher want it?'
+
+''Ow much did 'e tell ye t'ask for it?'
+
+'Tell me? 'Oo?'
+
+'_You_ know. 'Ow much didjer say 'e said?'
+
+Dicky was mystified. 'Dunno wotcher mean,' he replied.
+
+Mr Weech suddenly broke into a loud laugh, but kept his keen look on the
+boy's face nevertheless. 'Ah, it's a good joke, Dicky, ain't it?' he
+said, and laughed again. 'But you can't 'ave me, ye know! Mr Grinder's a
+old friend o' mine, an' I know 'is little larks. Wot did 'e tell ye to
+do if I wouldn't 'ave that doormat?'
+
+'Tell me?' asked Dicky, plainly more mystified than ever. 'Wy 'e never
+told me nothink. 'E gimme the sack this afternoon, an' chucked me out.'
+
+'Then wotcher got yer apron on now for?'
+
+'Oh,' said Dicky, looking down at it, 'I jist put it on agin--o'
+purpose.' And he glanced at the mat.
+
+Mr Weech understood, and grinned--a genuine grin this time. 'That's
+right Dicky,' he said, 'never let yer wits go a-ramblin'. A sharp boy
+like you's a lot too good for a shop-boy, slavin' away from mornin' till
+night, an' treated ungrateful. Wot did 'e sack ye for?'
+
+'I dunno. Took a fit in 'is 'ead, I s'pose. Wotcher goin' to gimme for
+this mat? It's a two an' three mat.'
+
+'Want somethink to eat, doncher?' suggested Mr Weech, glancing at a heap
+of stale cake.
+
+'No I don't,' Dicky answered, with sulky resolution. 'I want money.'
+
+'Awright,' said Mr Weech, resignedly. 'You ain't 'ad much to eat an'
+drink 'ere for a long time, though. But I'll do the 'an'some, seein'
+you're bin treated ungrateful by Grinder. 'Ere's twopence.'
+
+But Dicky held to the mat. 'Twopence ain't enough,' he said. 'I want
+fourpence.' He meant to spare nobody--not even Mr Weech.
+
+'Wot? Fourpence?' gasped Mr Weech indignantly. 'Wy, you're mad. Take it
+away.'
+
+Dicky rolled the mat under his arm and turned to the door.
+
+''Ere,' said Mr Weech, seeing him going, 'I'll make it thrippence,
+seein' you're bin treated so bad. Thrippence--_and_ a slice o' cake,' he
+added, perceiving that Dicky did not hesitate.
+
+'I don't want no cake,' Dicky answered doggedly. 'I want fourpence, an'
+I won't take no less.'
+
+The good Weech was unwilling that Dicky should find another market after
+all, so he submitted to the extortion. 'Ah well,' he said, with a sigh,
+pulling out the extra coppers, 'jist for this once, then. You'll ave to
+make it up next time. Mindjer, it's on'y 'cos I'm sorry for ye bein'
+treated ungrateful. Don't _you_ go an' treat _me_ ungrateful, now.'
+
+Dicky pocketed his pence and made for home, while Mr Weech, chuckling
+gently at his morning prophecy of a doormat for fourpence, carried the
+plunder to the room reserved for new and unused stock; promising
+himself, however, a peep at Grinder's shop in the morning, to make quite
+sure that Dicky had really left.
+
+So ended Dicky's dealings with the house of Grinder. When Father Sturt
+next saw the oil-man, and inquired of Dicky's progress, he was met with
+solemn congratulations that no larcenies were to pay for. Mr Grinder's
+sagacity, it seemed, had enabled him to detect and crush at the outset
+Dicky's plans for selling stock wholesale on his own account. Out of
+consideration for the vicar's recommendation he had refrained from
+handing the boy over to the police, but had paid him a week in advance
+and dismissed him. Father Sturt insisted on repaying the money, and
+went his way with a heavy heart. For if this were what came of the
+promising among his flock, what of the others? For some while he saw
+nothing of Dicky; and the incident fell back among a crowd of others in
+his remembrance: for Dicky was but one among thousands, and the
+disappointment was but one of many hundreds.
+
+Lying awake that night, but with closed eyes, Dicky heard his mother,
+talking with his father, suggest that perhaps an enemy had earwigged
+Grinder, and told him a tale that had brought about Dicky's dismissal:
+somebody, perhaps, who wanted the situation for somebody else. Josh
+Perrott did no more than grunt at the guess, but it gave a new light to
+Dicky. Clearly that would account for Grinder's change. But who could
+the mischief-maker be?
+
+The little clock on the mantel-piece ticked away busily in the silence,
+and Dicky instantly thought of the hunchback. He it must have been,
+without a doubt. Who else? Was he not hanging about the shop, staring
+and sneering, but a day or two back? And was it not he who had pursued
+him with malice on every occasion, in school and out? Had not Bobby
+Roper this very trick of lying tales? Where was the gratuitous injury in
+all these four years that had not been Bobby Roper's work? Dicky
+trembled with rage as he lay, and he resolved on condign revenge. The
+war with Dove Lane was over for the time being, but that made it easier
+for him to catch his enemy.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+The feud between the Jago and Dove Lane was eternal, just as was that
+between the Ranns and the Learys; but, like the Rann and Leary feud, it
+had its paroxysms and its intervals. And, in both cases, the close of a
+paroxysm was signalised by a great show of amity between the factions.
+Bob Rann and Billy Leary would drink affably from the same pot, and
+Norah Walsh and Sally Green would call each other 'mum'; while Jagos and
+Dove-Laners would mingle in bars and lend pinches of tobacco, and call
+each other 'matey.' A paroxysm in the war had now passed, and
+reconciliation was due. The Dove-Laners had been heavily thrashed: their
+benjamins and kicksies had been impounded in Meakin Street, and they had
+ceased from buying. Dove Lane itself had been swept from end to end by
+the victorious Jago, and the populations of both were dotted thickly
+with bandaged heads. This satisfactory state of things achieved, there
+was little reason left for fighting. Moreover, if fighting persisted too
+long at a time, the police were apt to turn up in numbers, subjecting
+the neighbourhood to much inconvenient scrutiny, and very often coming
+across Jagos--or even Dove-Laners--'wanted' on old accounts. So peace
+was declared; and, as a visible sign thereof, it was determined that the
+Dove-Laners should visit the Jago in a body, there to join in a
+sing-song at Mother Gapp's. Mother Gapp's was chosen, not only because
+it _was_ Mother Gapp's--an important consideration--but also because of
+the large room behind the bar, called the 'club-room,' which had long
+ago been made of two rooms and a big cupboard, by the cutting away of
+crazy partitions from the crazy walls.
+
+Scarce was it dark when the Dove-Laners, in a succession of hilarious
+groups--but withal a trifle suspicious--began to push through Mother
+Gapp's doors. Their caps pulled down to their ears, their hands in their
+pockets, their shoulders humped, and their jackets buttoned tight, they
+lurched through the Jago, grinning with uneasy affability at the
+greetings that met them, being less practised than the Jagos in the
+assumption of elaborate cordiality.
+
+In the club-room of the Feathers there were but three or four of the
+other party, though the bar was packed. The three or four, of whom Josh
+Perrott was one, were by way of a committee of stewards deputed to bid
+the Dove-Laners welcome, and to help them to seats. The Jagos were in
+some sort in the situation of hosts, and it had been decided after
+debate that it would ill become them to take their places till their
+guests were seated. The punctilio of the Jago on such occasions was a
+marvel ever.
+
+So Josh Perrott stood at one side of the club-room door and Billy Leary
+at the other, shaking hands with all who entered, and strenuously
+maintaining cheerful grins. Now the Jago smile was a smile by itself,
+unlike the smiles in other places. It faded suddenly, and left the
+face--the Jago face--drawn and sad and startling by contrast, as of a
+man betrayed into mirth in the midst of great sorrow. So that a
+persistent grin was known for a work of conscious effort.
+
+The Dove-Laners came in still larger numbers than had been expected, and
+before long it was perceived that there would be little space in the
+club-room, if any at all, for the Jagos. Already the visitors seemed to
+fill the place, but they still kept coming, and found places by
+squeezing. There was some doubt as to what had best be done. Meanwhile
+the sing-song began, for at least a score were anxious to 'oblige' at
+once, and every moment fresh volunteers arose. Many Dove-Laners stood
+up, and so made more room; but more came, and still more, till the
+club-room could hold not another, and the very walls were like to burst.
+Under the low ceiling hung a layer of smoke that obscured the face of
+the man standing on the table at the end to sing; and under the smoke
+was a close-packed array of heads, hats, and clay pipes, much
+diversified by white bandages and black eyes.
+
+Such Dove-Laners as came in now were fain to find places in the bar, if
+they could; and a crowd of Jagos, men and women, hung about the doors of
+the Feathers. More fortunate than other boys, Dicky, who would go
+anywhere to hear what purported to be music, had succeeded in worming
+himself through the bar and almost to the door of the club-room; but he
+could get no farther, and now he stood compressed, bounded on the face
+by Cocko Harnwell's coat-tails, and on the back of the head by Fluffy
+Pike's moleskin waistcoat, with pearlies down the front and the artful
+dodge over the pockets. Pud Palmer--one of the reception committee--was
+singing. He accompanied his chorus by a step dance, and all the company
+stamped in sympathy:--
+
+    '_She's a fighter, she's a biter, she's a swearer, she's a tearer,
+      The gonophs down aar alley they calls 'er Rorty Sal;
+    But as I'm a pertikiler sort o' bloke, I calls 'er Rorty Sairer,
+      I'm goin'_--'
+
+Crack!--CRASH!
+
+Dicky clung to Cocko Harnwell's coat-tails lest he were trampled to
+death; and for a while he was flung about, crushed and bruised, among
+rushing men, like a swimmer among breakers, while the air was rent with
+howls and the smash of glass. For the club-room floor had given way.
+
+It had been built but slightly in the beginning, as floor for two small
+rooms and a cupboard, with little weight to carry. Old and rotten now,
+and put to the strain of a multitude, stamping in unison, it had failed
+utterly, and had let down a struggling mob of men five feet on the
+barrels in the cellar, panic-stricken and jumbled with tables, pots,
+wooden forms, lighted pipes and splintered joinery.
+
+From the midst of the stramash a Dove-Laner bawled aloud that it was a
+trap, and instantly Jagos and Dove-Laners were at each others' throats,
+and it was like to go hard with the few Jagos among the ruins. Billy
+Leary laid about him desperately with a ragged piece of flooring, while
+Josh Perrott and Pud Palmer battered Dove-Laners with quart pots. Then
+it was shouted without that the Dove-Laners were exterminating the
+Jagos within, and a torrent of Jagos burst through the doors, poured
+through the bar, and over the club-room threshold into the confusion
+below.
+
+Dicky, bruised, frightened and flung like a rag this way and that, at
+last made shift to grasp a post, and climb up on the bar counter. Mother
+Gapp, a dishevelled maniac, was dancing amid pots and broken glass,
+black in the face, screaming inaudibly. Dicky stumbled along the
+counter, climbed over the broken end of a partition, and fell into the
+arms of Kiddo Cook, coming in with the rush. 'Put the boy out!' yelled
+Kiddo, turning and heaving him over the heads behind him. Somebody
+caught Dicky by a leg and an arm, his head hit the door post, the world
+turned a double-somersault about him, and he came down with a crash. He
+was on the flags of Old Jago Street, with all his breath driven out of
+him.
+
+But he was quickly on his feet again. A crowd beat against the front of
+Mother Gapp's, and reinforcements came running from everywhere, with the
+familiar rallying-cry, 'Jago! Jago 'old tight!' Dove Lane had abused
+the Jago hospitality; woe to the Dove-Laners!
+
+There were scuffles here and there, where Dove-Laners, who had never
+reached the club-room, or who had been crowded out of it, made for
+escape. Dicky was shaken and sore, but he pulled himself together
+resolutely. He had seen a few Dove Lane boys about before he had got
+into the Feathers, and plainly it was his duty to find them and bash
+them. Moreover, he wondered what had become of his father. He hastened
+through the dark passage of the house next to Mother Gapp's, into the
+back yard, and through the broken fence. There was a door in the
+club-room wall, and through this he thought to see what was going
+forward.
+
+The cellar--at any rate, at the farther end--was a pit of writhing
+forms, and the din rose loud as ever. A short figure stood black against
+the light, and held by the door-post, looking down at the riot. Dicky
+knew it. He sprang at Bobby Roper, pulled him by the arm, and struck at
+him furiously. The hunchback, whimpering, did his best to retaliate and
+to get away; but Dicky, raging at the remembrance of his fancied
+injury, struck savagely, and struck again, till Bobby Roper tripped
+backward over the projecting end of a broken floor-board, and pitched
+headlong into the cellar. He struck a barrel and rolled over, falling
+into the space between that and two other barrels. Dicky looked, but the
+hunchback did not move. Then some of the Dove-Laners flung pots at the
+lamps hanging against the club-room walls. Soon they were smashed and
+fell, and there was a darkness; and under cover thereof the aliens
+essayed flight.
+
+Dicky was a little frightened at what he had done, but he felt that with
+Bobby Roper anything was justifiable. Some Dove-Laners escaped by the
+back door--the cellar was low, and there was not five feet between the
+barrels and the broken joists--and these Dicky avoided by getting back
+through the fence. In the end, most of the enemy struggled away by one
+means or another, and when lights were brought at last the Jagos were
+found pummelling each other savagely in the gloom.
+
+Father Sturt, apprised of something uncommon by the exodus of members
+from the club, finally locked the doors and came to investigate. He
+arrived as the Jagos were extricating themselves from the cellar, and it
+was he who lifted the little hunchback from among the barrels and
+carried him into the open air; he also who carried him home. No bone was
+broken, and no joint was disturbed, but there was a serious shock, many
+contusions, and a cut on the scalp. So said the surgeon whom Father
+Sturt took with him to Dove Lane. And Bobby Roper lay a fortnight in
+bed.
+
+More plaster than ever embellished the heads of Dove Lane and the Jago
+that night; but for the Jagos there was compensation. For down among the
+barrels lay many a packet of tobacco, many a pair of boots, and many a
+corner stuffed with mixed property of other sorts: which Mother Gapp had
+fenced for many a month back. So that it happened to more than one
+warrior to carry home again something with which he had run between the
+'Posties' long before, and had sold to Mother Gapp for what she would
+give.
+
+The ground floor of the Feathers stood a battered shell. The damage of
+four years ago was inconsiderable compared to this. With tears and
+blasphemy Mother Gapp invaded the hoard of her long iniquity to buy a
+new floor; but it was the larceny--the taking of the tobacco and the
+boots, and the many other things from among the barrels--that cut her to
+the soul. A crool--a crool thing was such robbery--sheer robbery, said
+Mother Gapp.
+
+Josh Perrott got a bad sprain in the cellar and had to be helped home.
+More, he took with him not a single piece of plunder, such was his
+painful disablement.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+For more than a week Josh Perrott could not walk about. And it was a bad
+week. For some little while his luck had been but poor, and now he found
+himself laid up with a total reserve fund of fourteenpence. A coat was
+pawned with old Poll Rann (who kept a leaving shop in a first floor back
+in Jago Row) for ninepence. Then Josh swore at Dicky for not being still
+at Grinder's, and told him to turn out and bring home some money. Dicky
+had risen almost too sore and stiff to stand, on the morning after the
+fight at the Feathers, and he was little better now. But he had to go,
+and he went, though he well knew that a click was out of the question,
+for his joints almost refused to bend. But he found that the fat's
+a-running boys were contemplating business, and he scouted for them
+with such success as to bring home sevenpence in the evening. Then Kiddo
+Cook, who had left Mother Gapp's with a double armful on the night of
+the sing-song, found himself rich enough, being a bachelor, to lend Josh
+eighteenpence. And a shawl of Hannah Perrott's was pawned. That, though,
+was redeemed the next day, together with the coat. For Dicky brought
+home a golden sovereign.
+
+It had been an easy click--scarce a click at all, perhaps, strictly
+speaking. Dicky had tramped into the city, and had found a crowd outside
+St Paul's--a well-dressed crowd, not being moved on: for something was
+going forward in the cathedral. He recognised one of the High Mob, a
+pogue-hunter--that is a pickpocket who deals in purses. Dicky watched
+this man's movements, by way of education; for he was an eminent
+practitioner, and worked alone, with no assistant to cover him. Dicky
+saw him in the thick of the crowd, standing beside and behind one lady
+after another; but it was only when his elbow bent to slip something
+into his own pocket that Dicky knew he had 'touched.' Presently he
+moved to another part of the crowd, where mostly men were standing, and
+there he stealthily let drop a crumpled newspaper, and straightway left
+the crowd. He had 'worked' it as much as he judged safe. Dicky wriggled
+toward the crumpled paper, slipped it under his jacket, and cleared away
+also. He knew that there was something in the paper beside news: that,
+in fact, there were purses in it--purses emptied and shed as soon as
+might be, because nobody can swear to money, but strange purses lead to
+destruction. Dicky recked little of this danger, but made his best pace
+to a recess in a back street, there to examine his pogues; for though
+the uxter was gone from them, they might yet bring a few coppers from Mr
+Weech, if they were of good quality. They were a fairly sound lot. One
+had a large clasp that looked like silver, and another was quite new,
+and Dicky was observing with satisfaction the shop-shininess of the
+lining, when he perceived a cunning pocket at the back, lying flat
+against the main integument--and in it was a sovereign! He gulped at the
+sight. Clearly the pogue-hunter, emptying the pogues in his pocket by
+sense of touch, had missed the flat pocket. Dicky was not yet able to
+run with freedom, but he never ceased from trotting till he reached his
+own staircase in Old Jago Street. And so the eight or nine days passed,
+and Josh went out into the Jago with no more than a tenderness about his
+ankle.
+
+Now, he much desired a good click; so he went across High Street
+Shoreditch, to Kingsland Railway Station and bought a ticket for
+Canonbury.
+
+Luck was against him, it was plain. He tramped the northern suburbs from
+three o'clock till dark, but touched for nothing. He spent money,
+indeed, for he feared to overwork his ankle, and for that reason rested
+in divers public-houses. He peeped in at the gates of quiet gardens, in
+the hope of garden-hose left unwatched, or tennis-rackets lying in a
+handy summer-house. But he saw none. He pried about the doors of private
+stable-yards, in case of absent grooms and unprotected bunches of
+harness; but in vain. He inspected quiet areas and kitchen entrances in
+search of unguarded spoons--even descended into one area, where he had
+to make an awkward excuse about buying old bottles, in consequence of
+meeting the cook at the door. He tramped one quiet road after another on
+the look out for a dead 'un--a house furnished, but untenanted. But
+there was never a dead 'un, it seemed, in all the northern district. So
+he grew tired and short-tempered, and cursed himself for that he had not
+driven off with a baker's horse and cart that had tempted him early in
+the afternoon.
+
+It grew twilight, and then dark. Josh sat in a public-house, and took a
+long rest and some bread and cheese. It would never do to go home
+without touching, and for some time he considered possibilities with
+regard to a handful of silver money, kept in a glass on a shelf behind
+the bar. But it was out of reach, and there were too many people in the
+place for any attempt by climbing on the counter. Josh grew savage and
+soured. Plastering itself was not such troublesome work; and at least
+the pay was certain. It was little short of ten o'clock when he left
+the public-house and turned back toward Canonbury. He would have
+_something_ on the way, he resolved, and he would catch the first train
+home. He would have to knock somebody over in a dark street, that was
+all. It was nothing new, but he would rather have made his click another
+way this time, because his tender ankle might keep him slow, or even
+give way altogether; and to be caught in a robbery with violence might
+easily mean something more than mere imprisonment; it might mean a dose
+of the 'cat': and the cat was a thing the thought or the mention whereof
+sent shudders through the Old Jago.
+
+But no: nobody worth knocking down came his way. Truly luck was out
+to-night. There was a spot by the long garden wall of a corner house
+that would have suited admirably, and as Josh lingered there, and looked
+about him, his eye fell on a ladder, reared nearly upright against the
+back wall of that same corner house, and lashed at the roof. It passed
+by the side of the second floor window, whereof the top sash was a
+little open. That would do. It was not his usual line of work, but it
+looked very promising.
+
+He stuck his stick under his waistcoat by way of the collar, and climbed
+the wall with gingerly care, giving his sound foot all the hard work.
+The ladder offered no difficulty, but the bottom sash of the window was
+stiff, and he cracked a pane of glass in pushing at the frame with his
+stick. The sash lifted, however, in the end, and he climbed into the
+dark room, being much impeded by the dressing-table. All was quiet in
+the house, and the ticking of a watch on the dressing-table was distinct
+in the ear. Josh felt for it and found it, with a chain hanging from the
+bow.
+
+The house was uncommonly quiet. Could it possibly be a dead 'un after
+all? Josh felt that he ought to have inspected the front windows before
+climbing the wall, but the excitement of the long-delayed chance had
+ruined his discretion. At any rate he would reconnoitre. The door was
+ajar and the landing was dark.
+
+Down in the drawing-room a gross, pimply man, in shirt-sleeves and
+socks, sat up on the sofa at the sound of an opened window higher in
+the house. He took a drink from the glass by his side, and listened.
+Then he rose and went softly upstairs.
+
+Josh Perrott came out on the landing. It was a long landing, with a
+staircase at the end, illuminated from somewhere below: so that it was
+not a case of a dead 'un after all. He tip-toed along to take a look
+down the stairs, nevertheless. Then he was conscious of a loud
+breathing, as of an over-gorged cow, and up behind the stair-rails rose
+a fat head, followed by a fat trunk, between white shirt-sleeves.
+
+Josh sank into the shadow. The man had no light, but discover him he
+must, sooner or later, for the landing was narrow. Better sooner, and
+suddenly. As the man's foot was on the topmost stair, Josh sprang at him
+with a straight left-hander that took him on the broad chin, and sent
+him downstairs in a heap, with a crash and a roar. Josh darted back to
+the room he had just left, scrambled through the window, and slid down
+the ladder, as he had slid down many another when he was a plasterer's
+boy. He checked himself short of the bottom, sprang at the wall-coping,
+flung himself over, and ran up the dark by-street, with the sound of
+muffled roars and screams faint in his ears.
+
+He ran a street or two, taking every corner as he came to it, and then
+fell into a walk. In his flight he had not spared his ankle, and now it
+was painful. Moreover, he had left his stick behind him, in the bedroom.
+But he was in Highbury, and Canonbury Road Station was less than half a
+mile away. He grinned silently as he went, for there was something in
+the aspect of the overfed householder, and in the manner of his
+downfall, that gave the adventure a comic flavour. He took a peep at his
+spoil as he passed under a street lamp, for all watches and chains are
+the same in the dark, and the thing might be a mere Waterbury on a steel
+guard. But no: both were gold, and heavy: a red clock and slang if ever
+there was one. And so Josh Perrott hobbled and chuckled his way home.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+But indeed Josh Perrott's luck was worse than he thought. For the gross,
+pimply man was a High Mobsman--so very high a mobsman that it would have
+been slander and libel, and a very great expense, to write him down a
+mobsman at all. He paid a rent of a hundred and twenty pounds a year,
+and heavy rates, and put half-a-crown into the plate at a very
+respectable chapel every Sunday. He was, in fact, the King of High
+Mobsmen, spoken of among them as the Mogul. He did no vulgar thievery:
+he never screwed a chat, nor claimed a peter, nor worked the mace. He
+sat easily at home, and financed (sometimes planned) promising
+speculations: a large swindle requiring much ground-baiting and
+preliminary outlay; or a robbery of specie from a mail train; or a bank
+fraud needing organization and funds. When the results of such
+speculations consisted of money he took the lion's share. When they were
+expressed in terms of imprisonment they fell to active and intelligent
+subordinates. So that for years the Mogul had lived an affluent and a
+blameless life, far removed from the necessity of injudicious bodily
+exercise, and characterised by every indulgence consistent with a proper
+suburban respectability. He had patronised, snubbed, or encouraged High
+Mobsmen of more temerarious habit, had profited by their exploits, and
+had read of their convictions and sentences with placid interest in the
+morning papers. And after all this, to be robbed in his own house and
+knocked downstairs by a casual buster was an outrage that afflicted the
+Mogul with wrath infuriate. Because that was a sort of trouble that had
+never seemed a possibility, to a person of his eminence: and because the
+angriest victim of dishonesty is a thief.
+
+However, the burglar had got clean away, that was plain; and he had
+taken the best watch and chain in the house, with the Mogul's initials
+on the back. So that respectable sufferer sent for the police, and gave
+his attention to the the alleviation of bumps and the washing away of
+blood. In his bodily condition a light blow was enough to let a great
+deal of blood--no doubt with benefit; and Josh Perrott's blows were not
+light in any case.
+
+So it came to pass that not only were the police on the look-out for a
+man with a large gold watch with the Mogul's monogram on the back; but
+also the word was passed as by telegraph through underground channels,
+till every fence in London was warned that the watch was the Mogul's;
+and ere noon next day there was not one but would as lief have put a
+scorpion in his pocket as that same toy and tackle that Josh Perrott was
+gloating over in his back room in Old Jago Street.
+
+As for Josh, his ankle was bad in the morning, and swelled. He dabbed at
+it perseveringly with wet rags, and rubbed it vigorously, so that by one
+o'clock he was able to lace up his boot and go out. He was anxious to
+fence his plunder without delay, and he made his way to Hoxton. The
+watch seemed to be something especially good, and he determined to stand
+out for a price well above the usual figure. For the swag of common
+thieves commanded no such prices as did that of the High Mob. All of it
+was bought and sold on the simple system first called into being seventy
+years back and more by the prince of fences, Ikey Solomons. A breast-pin
+brought a fixed sum, good or bad, and a roll of cloth brought the fixed
+price of a roll of cloth, regardless of quality. Thus a silver watch
+fetched six shillings, never more and never less; a gold watch was worth
+twice as much; an uncommonly good one--a rich man's watch--would bring
+as much as eighteen shillings, if the thief were judge enough of its
+quality to venture the demand. And as it commonly took three men to
+secure a single watch in the open street--one to 'front,' one to snatch,
+and a third to take from the snatcher--the gains of the toy-getting
+trade were poor, except to the fence. This time Josh resolved to put
+pressure on the fence, and to do his best to get something as near a
+sovereign as might be. And as to the chain, so thick and heavy, he would
+fight his best for the privilege of sale by weight. Thus turning the
+thing in his mind, he entered the familiar doorway of the old clothes
+shop.
+
+'Vot is id?' asked the fence, holding out his hand with the customary
+air of contempt for what was coming, by way of discounting it in
+advance. This particular fence, by-the-bye, never bought anything
+himself. He inspected whatever was brought on behalf of an occult
+friend; and the transaction was completed by a shabby third party in an
+adjoining court. But he had an amazingly keen regard for his friend's
+interests.
+
+Josh put the watch into the extended hand. The fence lifted it to his
+face, turned it over, and started. He looked hard at Josh, and then
+again at the watch, and handed it hastily back, holding it gingerly by
+the bow. 'Don' vant _dot_,' he said; 'nod me--nod 'im, I mean. No, no.'
+He turned away, shaking his hand as though to throw off contamination.
+'Take id avay.'
+
+'Wot's the matter?' Josh demanded, astonished. 'Is it 'cos o' the
+letters on the back? You can easy send it to church, can't ye?'
+
+A watch is 'sent to church' when it is put into another case. But the
+fence waved away the suggestion. 'Take id avay I tell you,' he said.
+'I--'e von't 'ave nodden to do vid id.'
+
+'Wot's the matter with the chain, then?' asked Josh. But the fence
+walked away to the back of the shop, wagging his hands desperately, like
+a wet man seeking a towel, and repeating only:--'Nodden to do vid
+id--take id avay--nodden to do vid id.'
+
+Josh stuffed his prize back into his pocket, and regained the street. He
+was confounded. What was wrong with Cohen? Did he suspect a police trick
+to entrap him? Josh snorted with indignation at the thought. He was no
+nark! But perhaps the police were showing a pressing interest in Cohen's
+business concerns just now, and he had suspended fencing for a while.
+The guess was a lame one, but he could think of none better at the
+moment, as he pushed his way to the Jago. He would try Mother Gapp.
+
+Mother Gapp would not even take the watch in her hands; her eyes were
+good enough at that distance. 'Lor', Josh Perrott,' she said, 'wot 'a'
+ye bin up to now? Want to git me lagged now, do ye? Ain't satisfied with
+breakin' up the 'ouse an' ruinin' a pore widder that way, ain't ye? You
+git out, go on. I 'ad 'nough o' you!'
+
+It was very extraordinary. Was there a general reclamation of fences?
+But there were men at work at the Feathers, putting down boards and
+restoring partitions; and two of them had been 'gone over' ruinously on
+their way to work, and now they came and went with four policemen.
+Possibly Mother Gapp feared the observation of carpenters. Be it as it
+might, there was nothing for it now but Weech's.
+
+Mr Weech was charmed. 'Dear me, it's a wonderful fine watch, Mr
+Perrott--a wonderful fine watch. An' a beautiful chain.' But he was
+looking narrowly at the big monogram as he said it. 'It's reely a
+wonderful article. 'Ow they do git 'em up, to be sure! Cost a lot o'
+money too, I'll be bound. Might you be thinkin' o' sellin' it?'
+
+'Yus o' course,' replied Josh. 'That's wot I brought it for.'
+
+'Ah, it's a lovely watch, Mr Perrott--a lov-erly watch; an' the chain
+matches it. But you mustn't be too 'ard on me. Shall we say four pound
+for the little lot?'
+
+It was more than double Josh's wildest hopes, but he wanted all he could
+get. 'Five,' he said doggedly.
+
+Weech gazed at him with tender rebuke. 'Five pound's a awful lot o'
+money, Mr Perrott,' he said. 'You're too 'ard on me, reely. I 'ardly
+know 'ow I can scrape it up. But it's a beautiful little lot, an' I
+won't 'aggle. But I ain't got all that money in the 'ouse now. I never
+keep so much money in the 'ouse--sich a neighb'r'ood, Mr Perrott! Bring
+it round to-morrer mornin' at eleven.'
+
+'Awright, I'll come. Five quid, mind.'
+
+'Ah yus,' answered Mr Weech, with a reproving smile. 'It's reely more
+than I ought!'
+
+Josh was jubilant, and forgot his sore ankle. He had never handled such
+a sum as five pounds since his fight with Billy Leary, years ago; when,
+indeed, he had stooped to folly in the shape of lavish treating, and so
+had not enjoyed the handling of the full amount.
+
+Mr Weech, also, was pleased. For it was a great stroke of business to
+oblige so distinguished a person as the Mogul. There was no telling what
+advantages it might not lead to in the way of trade.
+
+That night the Perrotts had a hot supper, brought from Walker's
+cook-shop in paper. And at eleven the next morning Josh, twenty yards
+from Mr Weech's door, with the watch and chain in his pocket, was tapped
+on the arm by a constable in plain clothes, while another came up on the
+other side. 'Mornin', Perrott,' said the first constable, cheerily.
+'We've got a little business with you at the station.'
+
+'Me? Wot for?'
+
+'Oh well, come along; p'raps it ain't anything--unless there's a gold
+watch an' chain on you, from Highbury. It's just a turnin' over.'
+
+'Awright,' replied Josh, resignedly. 'It's a fair cop. I'll go quiet.'
+
+'That's right, Perrott; it ain't no good playin' the fool, you know.'
+They were moving along; and as they came by Weech's shop, a whiskered
+face, with a patch of shining scalp over it, peeped from behind a
+curtain that hung at the rear of the bloaters and plumcake in the
+window. As he saw it, Josh ducked suddenly, wrenching his arm free, and
+dashed over the threshold. Mr Weech, whiskers and apron flying, galloped
+through the door at the back, and the constables sprang upon Josh
+instantly and dragged him into the street. 'Wotcher mean?' cried the one
+who knew him, indignantly, and with a significant glance at the other.
+'Call that goin' quiet?'
+
+Josh's face was white and staring with rage. 'Awright,' he grunted
+through his shut teeth, after a pause. 'I'll go quiet now. I ain't got
+nothin' agin _you_.'
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Dicky's morning theft that day had been but a small one--he had run off
+with a new two-foot rule that a cabinet-maker had carelessly left on an
+unfinished office table at his shop door in Curtain Road. It was not
+much, but it might fetch some sort of a dinner at Weech's, which would
+be better than going home, and, perhaps, finding nothing. So about noon,
+all ignorant of his father's misfortune, he came by way of Holywell Lane
+and Bethnal Green Road to Meakin Street.
+
+Mr Weech looked at him rather oddly, Dicky fancied, when he came in, but
+he took the two-foot rule with alacrity, and brought Dicky a rasher of
+bacon, and a slice of cake afterward. This seemed very generous. More:
+Mr Weech's manner was uncommonly amiable, and when the meal was over, of
+his own motion, he handed over a supplementary penny. Dicky was
+surprised; but he had no objection, and he thought little more about it.
+
+As soon as he appeared in Luck Row he was told that his father had been
+'smugged.' Indeed the tidings had filled the Jago within ten minutes.
+Josh Perrott was walking quietly along Meakin Street,--so went the
+news,--when up comes Snuffy and another split, and smugs him. Josh had a
+go for Weech's door, to cut his lucky out at the back, but was caught.
+That was a smart notion of Josh's, the Jago opinion ran, to get through
+Weech's and out into the courts behind. But it was no go.
+
+Hannah Perrott sat in her room, inert and lamenting. Dicky could not
+rouse her, and at last he went off by himself to reconnoitre about
+Commercial Street Police Station, and pick up what information he might;
+while a gossip or two came and took Mrs Perrott for consolation to
+Mother Gapp's. Little Em, unwashed, tangled and weeping, could well take
+care of herself and the room, being more than two years old.
+
+Josh Perrott would be brought up to-morrow, Dicky ascertained, at the
+North London Police Court. So the next morning found Dicky trudging
+moodily along the two miles of flags to Stoke Newington Road; while his
+mother and three sympathising friends, who foresaw an opportunity for
+numerous tiny drops with interesting circumstances to flavour them, took
+a penny cast on the way in a tramcar.
+
+Dicky, with some doubt as to the disposition of the door-keeping
+policeman toward ragged boys, waited for the four women, and contrived
+to pass in unobserved among them. Several Jagos were in the court,
+interested not only in Josh's adventure, but in one of Cocko Harnwell's,
+who had indulged, the night before, in an animated little scramble with
+three policemen in Dalston; and they waited with sympathetic interest
+while the luck was settled of a long string of drunk-and-disorderlies.
+
+At last Josh was brought in, and lurched composedly into the dock, in
+the manner of one who knew the routine. The police gave evidence of
+arrest, in consequence of information received, and of finding the
+watch and chain in Josh's trousers pocket. The prosecutor, with his head
+conspicuously bedight with sticking-plaster, puffed and grunted up into
+the witness-box, kissed the book, and was a 'retired commission agent.'
+He positively identified the watch and chain, and he not less positively
+identified Josh Perrott, whom he had picked out from a score of men in
+the police-yard. This would have been a feat indeed for a man who had
+never seen Josh, and had only once encountered his fist in the dark, had
+it not been for the dutiful though private aid of Mr Weech: who, in
+giving his information had described Josh and his one suit of clothes
+with great fidelity, especially indicating a scar on the right
+cheek-bone which would mark him among a thousand. The retired commission
+agent was quite sure of the prisoner. He had met him on the stairs,
+where there was plenty of light from a lamp, and the prisoner had
+attacked him savagely, beating him about the head and flinging him
+downstairs. The policeman called by the prosecutor's servant deposed to
+finding the prosecutor bruised and bleeding. There was a ladder against
+the back of the house; a bedroom window had been opened; there were
+muddy marks on the sill; and he had found the stick--produced--lying in
+the bedroom.
+
+Josh leaned easily on the rail before him while evidence was being
+given, and said 'No, yer worship,' whenever he was asked if he desired
+to question a witness. He knew better than to run the risk of
+incriminating himself by challenging the prosecutor's well-coloured
+evidence; and, as it was a certain case of committal for trial, it would
+have been useless in any event. He made the same reply when he was asked
+if he had anything to say before being committed: and straightway was
+'fullied.' He lurched serenely out of the dock, waving his cap at his
+friends in the court, and that was all. The Jagos waited till Cocko
+Harnwell got his three months and then retired to neighbouring
+public-houses; but Dicky remembered his little sister, and hurried home.
+
+The month's session at the Old Bailey had just begun, so that Josh had
+no long stay at Holloway. Among the Jagos it was held to be a most
+creditable circumstance that Josh was to take his trial with full
+honours at the Old Bailey, and not at mere County Sessions at
+Clerkenwell, like a simple lob-crawler or peter-claimer. For Josh's was
+a case of burglary with serious violence, such as was fitting for the
+Old Bailey, and not even a High Mobsman could come to trial with greater
+glory. 'As like as not it's laggin' dues, after 'is other convictions,'
+said Bill Rann. And Jerry Gullen thought so too.
+
+Dicky went, with his mother and Em, to see Josh at Newgate. They stood
+with other visitors, very noisy, before a double iron railing covered
+with wire-netting, at the farther side whereof stood Josh and other
+prisoners, while a screaming hubbub of question and answer filled the
+air. Josh had little to say. He lounged against the farther railing with
+his hands in his pockets, asked what Cocko Harnwell had got, and sent a
+message to Bill Rann. While his wife did little more than look dolefully
+through the wires, and pipe:--'Oh, Josh, wotever shall I do?' at
+intervals, with no particular emotion; while Em pressed her smudgy
+little face against the wires, and stared mightily; and while Dicky felt
+that if he had been younger he would have cried. When time was up, Josh
+waved his hand and slouched off, and his family turned out with the
+rest: little Em carrying into later years a memory of father as a man
+who lived in a cage.
+
+In such a case as this, the Jago would have been for ever disgraced if
+Josh Perrott's pals had neglected to get up a 'break' or subscription to
+pay for his defence. Things were never very flourishing in the Jago. But
+this was the sort of break a Jago could not shirk, lest it were
+remembered against him when his own turn came. So enough was collected
+to brief an exceedingly junior counsel, who did his useless best. But
+the facts were too strong even for the most inexperienced advocate; the
+evidence of the prosecutor was nowhere to be shaken, and the jury found
+a verdict of guilty without leaving the box--indeed, with scarce the
+formality of collecting their heads together over the rails. Then Josh's
+past was most unpleasantly raked up before him. He had been convicted
+of larceny, of assaulting the police, and of robbery with violence.
+There were two sentences of six months' imprisonment recorded against
+him, one of three months, and two of a month. Besides fines. The
+Recorder considered it a very serious offence. Not deterred by the
+punishments he had already received, the prisoner had proceeded to a
+worse crime--burglary; and with violence. It was plain that lenience was
+wasted in such a case, and simple imprisonment was not enough. There
+must be an exemplary sentence. The prisoner must be kept in penal
+servitude for five years.
+
+Lagging dues it was, as Bill Rann had anticipated. That Josh Perrott
+agreed with him was suggested by the fact that from the very beginning
+he described himself as a painter; because a painter in prison is apt to
+be employed at times in painting--a lighter and a more desirable task
+than falls to the lot of his fellows in other trades.
+
+In a room by the court Josh saw his wife, Dicky, and Bill Rann (Josh's
+brother-in-law for the occasion) before his ride to Holloway, his one
+stopping place on the way to Chelmsford Gaol. Little Em had been left
+sprawling in the Jago gutters. This time Hannah Perrott wept in good
+earnest, and Dicky, notwithstanding his thirteen years, blinked very
+hard at the wall before him. The arrangement of Josh's affairs was
+neither a long nor a difficult labour. 'S'pose you'll 'ave to do wot you
+can with rush bags, an' sacks, and match-boxes, an' wot not,' he said to
+his wife, and she assented. Josh nodded:--'An' if you 'ave to go in the
+'ouse,'--he meant the workhouse,--'well, it can't be 'elped. You won't
+be no wuss auf 'n me.'
+
+'Oh, _she'll_ be awright,' said Bill Rann, jerking his thumb cheerfully
+toward the missis. 'Wot about you? Think they'll make it Parkhurst?'
+
+Josh shook his head moodily. Parkhurst being the prison reserved for
+convicts of less robust habit, he had little hope of enjoying its easier
+conditions. Presently he said:--'I bin put away this time--fair put
+away.'
+
+'Wot?' answered Bill, 'narkin' dues is it?'
+
+Josh nodded.
+
+''Oo done it then? 'Oo narked?'
+
+Josh shook his head. 'Never mind,' he said, 'I don't want 'im druv out
+o' the Jago 'fore I come out. I'd be sorry to miss 'im. _I_ know
+'im--that's enough.'
+
+And then time was up. Josh suffered the missis to kiss him, and shook
+hands with Bill Rann. 'Good luck to all you Jagos,' he said. Dicky shook
+hands too, and said 'Good-bye, father!' in a voice of such laboured
+cheerfulness that a grin burst for a moment amid Josh's moody features
+as he was marched away, and so departed for the place--in Jago
+idiom--where the dogs don't bite.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+It was Father Sturt's practice to visit every family in his parish in
+regular order. But small as the parish was--insignificant, indeed, in
+mere area--its population exceeded eight thousand: so that the round was
+one of many months, for visiting was but one among innumerable duties.
+But Josh Perrott's lagging secured his family a special call. Not that
+the circumstances were in any way novel or at all uncommon; nor even
+that the vicar had any hope of being able to help. He was but the one
+man who could swim in a howling sea of human wreckage. In the Jago,
+wives like Hannah Perrott, temporarily widowed by the absence of
+husbands 'in the country,' were to be counted in scores, and most were
+in worse case than she, in the matter of dependent children. Father
+Sturt's house-list revealed the fact that in Old Jago Street alone,
+near seventy of the males were at that moment on ticket-of-leave.
+
+In the Perrott case, indeed, the sufferers were fortunate, as things
+went. Mrs Perrott had but herself and the child of two to keep, for
+Dicky could do something, whether good or bad, for himself. The vicar
+might try to get regular work for Dicky, but it would be a vain toil,
+for he must tell an employer what he knew of Dicky's past and of that
+other situation. He could but give the woman the best counsel at his
+command, and do what he might to quicken any latent spark of energy. So
+he did his best, and that was all. The struggle lay with Hannah Perrott.
+
+She had been left before, and more than once; but then the periods had
+been shorter, and, as a matter of fact, things had fallen out so well
+that scarce more than a meal here and there had had to be missed,
+though, when they came, the meals were apt to be but of crusts. And now
+there was more trouble ahead; for though she began her lonely time with
+but one small child on hand, she knew that ere long there would be two.
+
+Of course, she had worked before; not only when Josh had been 'in' but
+at other times, to add to the family resources. She was a clumsy
+needlewoman: else she might hope to earn some ninepence or a shilling a
+day at making shirts, by keeping well to the needle for sixteen hours
+out of the twenty-four; and from the whole sum there would be no
+deductions, except for needles and cotton, and what the frugal employer
+might choose to subtract for work to which he could devise an objection.
+But, as it was, she must do her best to get some sack-making. They paid
+one and sevenpence a hundred for sacks, and, with speed and long hours,
+she could make a hundred in four days. Rush bag-making would bring even
+more, which would be desirable, considering the three-and-sixpence a
+week for rent: which, with the payments for other rooms, made the rent
+of the crazy den in Old Jago Street about equal, space for space, to
+that of a house in Onslow Square. Then there was a more lucrative
+employment still, but one to be looked for at intervals only: one not
+to be counted on at all, in fact, for it was a prize, and many sought
+after it. This was the making of match-boxes. For making one hundred and
+forty-four outside cases with paper label and sandpaper, and the same
+number of trays to slide into them--a gross of complete boxes, or two
+hundred and eighty-eight pieces in all--one got twopence farthing;
+indeed, for a special size one even got a farthing a gross more; and all
+the wood and the labels and the sandpaper were provided free: so that
+the fortunate operative lost nothing out of the twopence farthing but
+the cost of the paste, and the string for tying up the boxes into
+regularly numbered batches, and the time employed in fetching the work
+and taking it back again. And if seven gross were to be got, and could
+be done in a day--and it was really not very difficult for the skilful
+hand who kept at work long enough--the day's income was one and
+threepence three-farthings, less expenses: still better, that, than the
+shirts. But the work was hard to get. As the public-spirited
+manufacturers complained: people would buy Swedish matches, whereas if
+people would Support Home Industries and buy no matches but theirs, they
+would be able to order many a twopence-farthingsworth of boxes more.
+
+There might be collateral sources of income, but these were doubtful and
+irregular. Probably Dicky would bring in a few coppers now and again.
+Then judicious attendance at churches, chapels and prayer-meetings
+beyond the Jago borders was rewarded by coal-tickets, boots, and the
+like. It was necessary to know just where and when to go and what to
+say, else the sole result might be loss of time. There was a church in
+Bethnal Green, for instance, which it would be foolish to enter before
+the end of the Litany, for then you were in good time to get your
+half-quarter hundredweight of coals; but at other places they might
+object to so late an appearance. Above all, one must know the ropes.
+There were several women in the Jago who made almost a living in this
+way alone. They were experts; they knew every fund, every
+meeting-house, all the comings and goings of the gullible; insomuch that
+they would take black umbrage at any unexpected difficulty in getting
+what they demanded. 'Wy,' one would say, 'I 'ad to pitch sich a bleed'n'
+'oly tale I earned it twice over.' But these were the proficient, and
+proficiency in the trade was an outcome of long experience working on a
+foundation of natural gifts; and Hannah Perrott could never hope to be
+among them.
+
+Turning these things in her mind, she addressed herself to her struggle.
+She managed to get some sacks, but for a week or two she could make
+nothing like twenty-five a day, though Dicky helped. Her fingers got
+raw; but she managed to complete a hundred within the first week. They
+might have been better done, as the employer said when he saw them. But
+she got her full one and sevenpence. She pawned her boots for fourpence,
+and wore two old odd ones of Josh's; and she got twopence on a
+petticoat. Dicky also helped a little; and at the end of a fortnight
+there came a godsend in the shape of material for match-boxes. Mrs
+Perrott was slow with them at first; but Dicky was quick, and even
+little Em began to learn to spread paste.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+Dicky grew slighter and lanker, dark about the eyes, and weaker. He was
+growing longitudinally, and that made his lateral wasting the quicker
+and the more apparent. A furtive frighted look hung ever in his face, a
+fugitive air about his whole person. His mother's long face was longer
+than ever, and blacker under the eyes than Dicky's own, and her weak
+open mouth hung at the corners as that of a woman faint with weeping.
+Little Em's knees and elbows were knobs in the midst of limbs of
+unnatural length. Rarely could a meal be seen ahead; and when it came,
+it made Dicky doubtful whether or not hunger were really caused by
+eating. But his chief distress was to see that little Em cried not like
+a child, but silently, as she strove to thread needles or to smear
+matchbox labels. And when good fortune brought match-boxes, there was an
+undue loss on the twopence farthing in the matter of paste. The stuff
+was a foul mess, sour and faint, and it was kept in a broken tea-cup,
+near which Dicky had detected his sister sucking her fingers; for in
+truth little Em stole the paste.
+
+On and off, by one way and another, Mrs Perrott made enough to keep the
+rent paid with indifferent regularity, and sometimes there was a copper
+or so left over. She did fairly well, too, at the churches and
+prayer-meetings; people saw her condition, and now and again would give
+her something beyond the common dole; so that she learned the trick of
+looking more miserable than usual at such places.
+
+The roof provided, Dicky felt that his was the task to find food. Alone,
+he might have rubbed along clear of starvation, but there were his
+mother and his sister. Lack of victuals shook his nerve and made him
+timid. Moreover, his terror grew greater than ever at the prospect of
+being caught in a theft. He lay awake at night and sweated to think of
+it. Who would bring in things from the outer world for mother and Em
+then? And the danger was worse than ever. He had felt the police-court
+birch, and it was bad, very bad. But he would take it every day and take
+it almost without a tear, rather than the chance of a reformatory.
+Magistrates were unwilling to send boys to reformatories while both
+father and mother were at hand to control them, for that were relieving
+the parents of their natural responsibility; but in a case like Dicky's,
+a 'schooling' was a very likely thing. So that Dicky, as he prowled, was
+torn between implacable need and the fear of being cut off from all
+chance of supplying it.
+
+It was his rule never to come home without bringing something, were it
+no more than a mildewed crust. It was a resolve impossible to keep at
+times, but at those times it was two in the morning ere he would drag
+himself, pallid and faint, into the dark room where the others might
+be--probably were--lying awake and unfed. Rather than face such a
+homecoming he had sometimes ventured on a more difficult feat than
+stealing in the outer world: he had stolen in the Jago. Sam Cash, for
+instance, had lost a bloater.
+
+Dicky never ate at Weech's now. Rarely, indeed, would he take payment in
+kind, unless it were for something of smaller value than the average of
+his poor pilferings; and then he carried the food home. But cheaper
+things could be bought elsewhere, so that more usually he insisted on
+money payments: to the grief of Mr Weech, who set forth the odiousness
+of ingratitude at length; though his homilies had no sort of effect on
+Dicky's morals.
+
+Father Sturt saw that Hannah Perrott gained no ground in her struggle,
+and urged her to apply for outdoor parish relief, promising to second
+her request with the guardians. But with an odd throwback to the
+respectability of her boiler-making ancestry, she disliked the notion of
+help from the parish, and preferred to remain as she was; for there at
+least her ingrained inertness seemed to side with some phantom of
+self-respect. To her present position she had subsided by almost
+imperceptible degrees, and she was scarce conscious of a change. But to
+parish relief there was a distinct and palpable step: a step that, on
+the whole, it seemed easier not to take. But it was with eagerness that
+she took a Maternity Society's letter, wherewith the vicar had provided
+himself on her behalf. For her time was drawing near.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+Josh Perrott well understood the advantage of good prison-behaviour, and
+after six months in his Chelmsford cell he had earned the right to a
+visit from friends. But none came. He had scarcely expected that anybody
+would, and asked for the order merely on the general principle that a
+man should take all he can get, useful or not. For there would have been
+a five shilling fare to pay for each visitor from London, and Hannah
+Perrott could as easily have paid five pounds. And indeed she had other
+things to think of.
+
+Kiddo Cook had been less observed of late in the Jago. In simple fact he
+was at work. He found that a steady week of porterage at Spitalfields
+Market would bring him sixteen shillings and perhaps a little more; and
+he had taken Father Sturt's encouragement to try another week, and a
+week after that. Father Sturt too, had cunningly stimulated Kiddo's
+ambitions: till he cherished aspirations to a fruit and vegetable stall,
+with a proper tarpaulin cover for bad weather; though he cherished them
+in secret, confident that they were of his own independent conception.
+Perhaps the Perrotts saw as much of Kiddo as did anybody at this time.
+For Kiddo, seeing how it went with them (though indeed it went as badly
+with others too) built up laboriously a solemn and most circumstantial
+Lie. There was a friend of his, a perfect gentleman, who used a
+beer-shop by Spitalfields Market, and who had just started an extensive
+and complicated business in the general provision line. He sold all
+sorts of fruit and vegetables fresh, and all sorts of meat, carrots,
+cabbages, saveloys, fried fish and pease-pudding cooked. His motto
+was:--'Everything _of_ the best.' But he had the misfortune to be quite
+unable himself to judge whether his goods were really of the best or
+not, in consequence of an injury to his palate, arising from a blow on
+the mouth with a quart pot, inflicted in the heat of discussion by a
+wealthy acquaintance. So that he, being a perfect gentleman, had
+requested Kiddo Cook, out of the friendship he bore him, to drop in
+occasionally and test his samples. 'Take a good big whack, you know,'
+said he, 'and get the advice of a friend or two, if _you_ ain't sure.'
+So Kiddo would take frequent and handsome whacks accordingly, to the
+perfect gentleman's delight; and, not quite knowing what to do with all
+the whacks, or being desirous of an independent opinion on them (there
+was some confusion between these two motives) he would bring Mrs Perrott
+samples, from time to time, and hope it wouldn't inconvenience her. It
+never did.
+
+It was late in the dusk of a rainy day that Kiddo Cook stumped into Old
+Jago Street with an apple in his pocket for Em. It was not much, but
+money was a little short, and at any rate the child would be pleased. As
+he climbed the stairs he grew conscious of sounds of anguish, muffled by
+the Perrotts' door. There might have been sobs, and there seemed to be
+groans; certainly little Em was crying, though but faintly, and
+something--perhaps boot-heels--scraped on the boards. Kiddo hesitated a
+little, and then knocked softly. The knock was unnoticed, so in the end
+he pushed the door open.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The day had been a bad one with the Perrotts. Dicky had gone out early,
+and had not returned. His mother had tramped unfed to the sackmakers,
+but there was no work to be got. She tried the rush bag people, with a
+like result. Nor was any matchbox material being given out. An
+unregarded turnip had rolled from a shop into the gutter, and she had
+seized it stealthily. It was not in nature to take it home whole, and
+once a corner was cleared, she dragged herself Jago-ward, gnawing the
+root furtively as she went. And so she joined Em at home late in the
+afternoon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kiddo pushed the door open and went in. At his second step he stood
+staring, and his chin dropped. 'Good Gawd!' said Kiddo Cook.
+
+He cleared the stairs in three jumps. He stood but an instant on the
+flags before the house, with a quick glance each way, and then dashed
+off through the mud.
+
+Pigeony Poll was erratic in residence, but just now she had a room by
+the roof of a house in Jago Row, and up the stairs of this house Kiddo
+ran, calling her by name.
+
+'Go over to Perrotts', quick!' he shouted from the landing below as Poll
+appeared at her door. 'Run, for Gawd's sake, or the woman'll croak! I'm
+auf to Father's.' And he rushed away to the vicar's lodgings.
+
+Father Sturt emerged at a run, and made for a surgeon's in Shoreditch
+High Street. And when the surgeon reached Hannah Perrott he found her
+stretched on her ragged bed, tended, with anxious clumsiness, by Pigeony
+Poll; while little Em, tearful and abashed, sat in a corner and nibbled
+a bit of turnip.
+
+Hannah Perrott had anticipated the operation of the Maternity Society
+letter, and another child of the Jago had come unconsenting into its
+black inheritance.
+
+Father Sturt met the surgeon as he came away in the later evening, and
+asked if all were well. The surgeon shrugged his shoulders. 'People
+would call it so,' he said. 'The boy's alive, and so is the mother. But
+you and I may say the truth. You know the Jago far better than I. Is
+there a child in all this place that wouldn't be better dead--still
+better unborn? But does a day pass without bringing you just such a
+parishioner? Here lies the Jago, a nest of rats, breeding, breeding, as
+only rats can; and we say it is well. On high moral grounds we uphold
+the right of rats to multiply their thousands. Sometimes we catch a rat.
+And we keep it a little while, nourish it carefully, and put it back
+into the nest to propagate its kind.'
+
+Father Sturt walked a little way in silence. Then he said:--'You are
+right, of course. But who'll listen, if you shout it from the housetops?
+I might try to proclaim it myself, if I had time and energy to waste.
+But I have none--I must work, and so must you. The burden grows day by
+day, as you say. The thing's hopeless, perhaps, but that is not for me
+to discuss. I have my duty.'
+
+The surgeon was a young man, but Shoreditch had helped him over most of
+his enthusiasms. 'That's right,' he said, 'quite right. People are so
+very genteel, aren't they?' He laughed, as at a droll remembrance. 'But,
+hang it all, men like ourselves needn't talk as though the world was
+built of hardbake. It's a mighty relief to speak truth with a man who
+knows--a man not rotted through with sentiment. Think how few men we
+trust with the power to give a fellow creature a year in gaol, and how
+carefully we pick them! Even damnation is out of fashion, I believe,
+among theologians. But any noxious wretch may damn human souls to the
+Jago, one after another, year in year out, and we respect his right: his
+sacred right.'
+
+At the 'Posties' the two men separated. The rain, which had abated for a
+space, came up on a driving wind, and whipped Dicky Perrott home to meet
+his new brother.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Things grew a little easier with the Perrotts. Father Sturt saw that
+there was food while the mother was renewing her strength, and he had a
+bag of linen sent. More, he carried his point as to parish relief by
+main force. It was two shillings and three quartern loaves a week.
+Unfortunately the loaves were imprinted with the parish mark, or they
+might have been sold at the chandler's, in order that the whole measure
+of relief might be passed on to the landlord (a very respectable man,
+with a chandler's shop of his own) for rent. As it was, the bread
+perforce was eaten, and the landlord had the two shillings, as well as
+eighteenpence which had to be got in some other way. Of course, Hannah
+Perrott might have 'taken in lodgers' in the room, as others did, but
+she doubted her ability to bully the rent out of them, or to turn them
+out if they did not pay. Whatever was pawnable had gone already, of
+course, except the little nickel-plated clock. That might have produced
+as much as sixpence, but she had a whim to keep it. She regarded it as a
+memorial of Josh, for it was his sole contribution to the family
+appointments.
+
+Dicky, with a cast-off jacket from the vicar's store, took to hanging
+about Liverpool Street Station in quest of bags to carry. Sometimes he
+got bags, and coppers for carrying them: sometimes he got kicks from
+porters. An hour or two of disappointment in this pursuit would send him
+off on the prowl to 'find' new stock for Mr Weech. He went farther
+afield now: to the market-places in Mile End and Stepney, and to the
+riverside, where there were many chances--guarded jealously, however, by
+the pirate boys of the neighbourhood, who would tolerate no interlopers
+at the wharves. In the very early morning, too, he practised the
+sand-bag fake, in the Jago. For there were those among the Jagos who
+kept (two even bred) linnets and such birds, and prepared them for
+julking, or singing matches at the Bag of Nails. It was the habit of the
+bird-fanciers to hang their little wooden cages on nails out of window,
+and there they hung through the night: for it had been noted, as a
+surprising peculiarity in linnets, that a bird would droop and go off
+song after a dozen or so of nights in a Jago room, in company with
+eight, ten or a dozen human sleepers, notwithstanding the thoughtful
+shutting of windows. So that any early riser provided with a little bag
+packed with a handful or so of sand, could become an opulent bird-owner
+in half-an-hour. Let but the sand-bag be pitched with proper skill at
+the bottom of a cage, and that cage would leave the nail, and come
+tumbling and fluttering down into the ready hands of the early riser.
+The sand-bag brought down the cage and fell quietly on the flags, which
+was why it was preferred before a stone. The sand-bag faker was moved by
+no particular love of linnets. His spoil was got rid of as soon as the
+bird-shops opened in Club Row. And his craft was one of danger.
+
+Thus the months went with Dicky, and the years. There were changes in
+the Jago. The baby was but three months old when Father Sturt's new
+church was opened, and the club set going in new buildings; and it was
+at that time that Josh Perrott was removed to Portland. Even the gradual
+removal of the Old Jago itself was begun. For the County Council bought
+a row of houses at the end of Jago Row, by Honey Lane, with a design to
+build big barrack dwellings on the site. The scenes of the Jago Court
+eviction were repeated, with less governed antics. For the County
+Council knew not Jago ways; and when deputations came forth weeping,
+protesting the impossibility of finding new lodgings, and beseeching a
+respite, they were given six weeks more, and went back delighted into
+free quarters. At the end of the six weeks a larger deputation protested
+a little louder, wept a great deal more, and poached another month; for
+it would seem an unpopular thing to turn the people into the street.
+Thus in the end, when the unpopular thing had to be done, it was with
+sevenfold trouble, loud cursing of the County Council in the public
+street, and many fights. But this one spot of the Jago cleared, the
+County Council began to creep along Jago Row and into Half Jago Street;
+and after long delay the crude yellow brick of the barrack dwellings
+rose above the oft-stolen hoardings, and grew, storey by storey. Dicky
+was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. If Josh Perrott had only earned his
+marks, he would soon be out now.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+Josh Perrott earned his marks, and in less than four years from his
+conviction he came away from Portland. It was a mere matter of hours ere
+his arrival in London, when Dicky, hands in pockets, strolled along Old
+Jago Street, and by the 'Posties' to High Street.
+
+Dicky was almost at his seventeenth birthday. He had grown his utmost,
+and stood five feet two. He wore a cap with a cloth peak and ear-laps
+tied at the top with strings, slap-up kicksies, cut saucy, and a
+bob-tail coat of the out-and-out description: though all these glories
+were torn and shabby, and had been bought second-hand. He was safe from
+any risk of the reformatory now, being well over the age; and he had had
+the luck never to have been taken by the police since his father's
+lagging--though there were escapes too narrow to be thought about with
+comfort. It was a matter for wonderment, and he spoke of it with pride.
+Here he was, a man of long experience, and near seventeen years old, yet
+he had never been in prison. Few, very few of such an age could say
+that.
+
+Sometimes he saw his old enemy, the hunchback, who worked at a
+shoemaker's, but he saw him with unconcern. He cared nothing for
+tale-bearing now. The memory of old injuries had dulled, and, after all,
+this was a merely inconsiderable hunchback, whom it were beneath his
+dignity to regard with anything but tolerant indifference. Bob Roper
+steered clear at such encounters, and showed his teeth like a cat, and
+looked back malevolently. It didn't matter.
+
+Dicky was not married, either in the simple Jago fashion or in church.
+There was little difference, as a matter of fact, so far as facility
+went. There was a church in Bethnal Green where you might be married for
+sevenpence if you were fourteen years old, and no questions asked--or
+at any rate they were questions answers whereunto were easy to invent.
+You just came in, drunk if possible, with a batch of some scores, and
+rowdied about the church with your hat on, and the curate worked off the
+crowd at one go, calling the names one after another. You sang, or you
+shouted, or you drank out of a bottle, or you flung a prayer-book at a
+friend, as the fancy took you; and the whole thing was not a bad joke
+for the money, though after all sevenpence is half-a-gallon, and not to
+be wasted. But Dicky had had enough to do to look after his mother and
+Em and little Josh--as Hannah Perrott had called the baby. Dicky,
+indeed, had a family already. More: the Jago girls affected him with an
+odd feeling of repulsion. Not of themselves, perhaps, though they were
+squalid drabs long ere they were ripe for the sevenpenny church: but by
+comparison with the clean, remote shop-girls who were visible through
+the broad windows in the outer streets.
+
+Dicky intended the day to be a holiday. He was not going 'out,' as the
+word went, for ill-luck had a way of coming on notable days like this,
+and he might easily chance to 'fall' before his father got home. He was
+almost too big now for carrying bags at Liverpool Street, because small
+boys looked cheaper than large ones--not that there was anything
+especially large about Dicky, beyond his height of five feet two; and at
+the moment he could think of nothing else that might turn a copper. He
+stood irresolute on the High Street footway, and as he stood, Kiddo Cook
+hove in sight, dragging a barrow-load of carrots and cabbages. Kiddo had
+not yet compassed the stall with the rain-proof awning. But it was
+almost in sight, for the barrow could scarce hold all that he could
+sell; and there was a joke abroad that he was to be married in Father
+Sturt's church: some facetiously suggesting that Mother Gapp would prove
+a good investment commercially, while others maintained the greater
+eligibility of old Poll Rann.
+
+''Tcheer, Dicky!' said Kiddo, pulling up and wiping his cap-lining with
+a red cotton handkerchief. 'Ol' man out to-day, ain't 'e?'
+
+'Yus,' Dicky answered. ''Spect 'im up to-night.'
+
+Kiddo nodded, and wiped his face. ''Spose the mob'll git up a break for
+'im,' he said; 'but 'e'll 'ave a bit o' gilt from stir as well, won't
+'e? So 'e'll be awright.' And Kiddo stuffed his handkerchief into his
+trousers pocket, pulled his cap tight, and bent to his barrow-handles.
+
+Dicky turned idly to the left, and slouched to the corner of Meakin
+Street. There he loafed for a little while, and then went as aimlessly
+up the turning. Meakin Street was much as ever. There were still the
+chandlers' shops, where tea and sugar were sold by the farthingsworth,
+and the barber's where hair was fashionably cut for three half-pence:
+though Jago hair was commonly cut in another place and received little
+more attention. There was still Walker's cook-shop, foggy with steam,
+its windows all a-trickle, and there was the Original Slap-up Tog
+Emporium, with its kicksies and its benjamins cut saucy as ever, and its
+double fakements still artful. At the 'dispensary' there was another
+young student, but his advice and medicine were sixpence, just as his
+remote predecessor's had been for little Looey, long forgotten. And
+farther down on the opposite side, Mr Aaron Weech's coffee-shop, with
+its Sunday-school festival bills, maintained its general Band-of-Hope
+air, and displayed its shrivelled bloaters, its doubtful cake, and its
+pallid scones in an odour of respectability and stale pickles. Dicky
+glanced in as he came by the door, and met the anxious eye of Mr Weech,
+whom he had not seen for a fortnight. For Dicky was no boy now, but knew
+enough to sell at Cohen's or elsewhere whenever possible, and to care
+not a rap for Mr Weech.
+
+As that tradesman saw Dicky, he burst into an eager smile, and came
+forward. 'Good mornin',--er--' with a quick glance--'Mr Perrott! Good
+mornin'! You're quite a stranger, reely!'
+
+_Mister_ Perrott! Mr Weech was very polite. Dicky stopped, and grunted a
+cautious salutation.
+
+'Do come in, Mr Perrott. Wy, is the good noos right wot I 'ear, about
+yer father a-comin' 'ome from--from the country?'
+
+Dicky confirmed the news.
+
+'Well I _am_ glad t' 'ear that now.' Mr Weech grinned exceedingly,
+though there was something lacking in his delight. 'But there, wot'll
+you 'ave, Mr Perrott? Say anythink in the 'ole shop and welcome! It's
+sich an 'appy occasion, Mr Perrott, I couldn't think o' chargin' you a
+'apeny. 'Ave a rasher, now, do. There's one on at this very moment.
+Sairer! ain't that rasher done yut?'
+
+Dicky did not understand this liberality, but he had long since adopted
+the policy of taking all he could get. So he sat at a table, and Mr
+Weech sat opposite.
+
+'Jist like ole times, ain't it?' said Mr Weech. 'An' that reminds me I
+owe you a shillin'. It's that pair o' noo boots you chucked over the
+back fence a fortnight ago. W'en I come to look at 'em, they was
+better'n wot I thought, an' so I says to meself, "This won't do," says
+I. "On'y ninepence for a pair o' boots like them ain't fair," I says,
+"an' I'd rayther be at a lawss on 'em than not be fair. Fair's fair, as
+the apostle David says in the Proverbs, an' them boots is worth very
+near _one_-an'-nine. So I'll give Mr Perrott another shillin'," I says,
+"the very next time I see 'im." An' there it is.'
+
+He put the shilling on the table, and Dicky pocketed it, nothing loth.
+The thing might be hard to understand, but that concerned him not.
+There was the shilling. Likewise, there was the bacon, and the coffee
+that went with it, and Dicky went at them with a will, recking nothing
+of why they were there, and nothing of any matter which might make the
+giver anxious in the prospect of an early meeting with Josh.
+
+'Ah,' Mr Weech went on, 'it'll be quite a pleasure to see yer father
+agin, that it will. Wot a blessed release! "Free from the lor O 'appy
+condition," as the 'ymn says. I 'ope 'e'll be well an' 'arty. An'
+if--_if_ there should be anythink in the way of a friendly lead or a
+subscription or wot not, I 'ope--remember this, Mr Perrott,
+won'tcher?--I 'ope you'll let me 'ave a chance to put down somethink
+good. Not as I can reely afford it, ye know, Mr Perrott--trade's very
+pore, an' it's sich a neighb'r'ood!--but I'll do it for yer father--yus,
+if it's me last copper. Ye won't forgit that, will ye? An' if 'e'd like
+any little relish w'en 'e comes 'ome--sich as a 'addick or a bit o'
+'am--wy, I'll wrop it up an' send it.'
+
+This was all very handsome, and Dicky wished some notion of the sort had
+occurred to Mr Weech on a few of the dinnerless days of the past four
+years. But he went away wondering if it might not be well to regard Mr
+Weech with caution for a while. For there must be a reason for all this
+generosity.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+It was in Mother Gapp's that Josh Perrott and his family met. Hannah had
+started out with an idea of meeting him at Waterloo Station; but,
+finding herself an object of distinction and congratulation among the
+women she met, she had lingered by the way, accepting many little drops,
+to prove herself not unduly proud, and so had failed of her intent.
+Josh, on his part, had not been abstinent. He had successfully run the
+gauntlet of Prisoners' Aid Societies and the like, professing to have 'a
+job waiting for him' in Shoreditch, and his way across London had been
+freely punctuated at public-houses; for his prison gratuity was a very
+pleasant and useful little sum. And now, when at last they met, he was
+not especially gracious. He wanted to know, not only why he had found
+nobody at home, but also why Hannah had never been to see him at
+Portland. As to the second question, the obvious and sufficient answer
+was that the return fare to Portland would have been some twenty-five
+shillings: a sum that Hannah had never seen together since Josh left
+her. As to the first, she protested, with muddled vehemence, that she
+had gone to meet him, and had missed him by some mistake as to arrival
+platforms. So that at length, urged thereto by the rest of the hour's
+customers at the Feathers, Josh kissed her sulkily and ordered her a
+drink. Em was distrustful at first, but drank her allowance of gin with
+much relish, tipping the glass again and again to catch the last drop;
+and little Josh, now for the first time introduced to Josh the elder,
+took a dislike to his father's not particularly sober glare and grin,
+and roared aloud upon his knee, assailing him, between the roars, with
+every curse familiar in the Jago, amid the genial merriment of the
+company. Dicky came in quietly, and stood at his father's elbow with
+the pride natural to a dutiful son on such an occasion. And at
+closing-time they all helped each other home.
+
+In the morning Josh rose late. He looked all the better for his lagging,
+browner than ever in the face, smarter and stouter. In a corner he
+perceived a little heap of made match-boxes, and, hard by, the material
+for more. It was Em's work of yesterday morning. 'Support 'ome
+ind_us_tries,' said Josh, musingly. 'Yus. Twopence-farden a gross.' And
+he kicked the heap to splinters.
+
+He strolled out into the street, to survey the Jago. In the bulk it was
+little changed, though the County Council had made a difference in the
+north-east corner, and was creeping farther and farther still. The
+dispossessed Jagos had gone to infect the neighbourhoods across the
+border, and to crowd the people a little closer. They did not return to
+live in the new barrack-buildings; which was a strange thing, for the
+County Council was charging very little more than double the rents which
+the landlords of the Old Jago had charged. And so another Jago, teeming
+and villainous as the one displaced, was slowly growing, in the form of
+a ring, round about the great yellow houses. But the new church and its
+attendant buildings most took Josh's notice. They were little more than
+begun when last he walked Old Jago Street in daylight, and now they
+stood, large and healthy amid the dens about them, a wonder and a pride.
+As he looked, Jerry Gullen and Bill Rann passed.
+
+'Wayo, brother-in-law!' sang out Bill Rann, who remembered the Old
+Bailey fiction of four years back, and thought it a capital joke.
+
+'Nice sort o' thing, ain't it?' said Jerry Gullen with indignant
+sarcasm, jerking his thumb toward the new church. 'The street's clean
+ruined. Wot's the good o' livin' 'ere now? Wy, a man mustn't even do a
+click, blimy!'
+
+'An' doncher?' asked Josh with a grin. Hereat another grin broke wide on
+Jerry Gullen's face, and he went his way with a wink and a whistle.
+
+'And so you're back again, Josh Perrott!' said old Beveridge, seedier
+than ever, with the 'Hard Up' fresh chalked on the changeless hat. 'Back
+again! Pity you couldn't stay there, isn't it? Pity we can't all stay
+there.'
+
+Josh looked after the gaunt old figure with much doubt and a vague
+indignation: for such a view was foreign to his understanding. And as he
+looked Father Sturt came out of the church, and laid his hand on Josh's
+shoulder.
+
+'What!' exclaimed the vicar, 'home again without coming to see me! But
+there, you must have been coming. I hope you haven't been knocking long?
+Come in now, at any rate. You're looking wonderfully well. What a
+capital thing a holiday is, isn't it--a good long one?' Taking Josh by
+the arm he hauled him, grinning, sheepish and almost blushing, toward
+the club door. And at that moment Sam Cash came hurrying round Luck Row
+corner, with his finger through a string, and on that string a bunch of
+grouse.
+
+'Dear me,' said Father Sturt, turning back, but without releasing Josh's
+arm. 'Here's our dear friend, Sam Cash, taking home something for his
+lunch. Come, Sam, with such a fine lot of birds as that, I'm sure you'll
+be proud to tell us where they came from. Eh?'
+
+For a moment Sam Cash was a trifle puzzled, even offended. Then there
+fell over his face the mask of utter inexpression which the vicar had
+learned to know. Said Sam Cash, stolidly: 'I bin 'avin' a little
+shootin' with a friend.'
+
+'Dear, dear, what a charming friend! And where are his moors? Nowhere
+about the Bethnal Green Road, I suppose, by the goods depot? Come now,
+I'm sure Josh Perrott would like to know. You didn't get any shooting in
+your little holiday, did you, Josh?' Josh grinned, delighted, but Sam
+shuffled uneasily, with a hopeless sidelong glance as in search of a
+hole wherein to hide. 'Ah, you see,' Father Sturt said, 'he doesn't want
+his friend's hospitality to be abused. Let me see--two, four, six--why
+there must be nine or ten brace, and all at one shot, too! Sam always
+makes his bag at one shot, you know, Josh, whatever the game is. Yes,
+wonderful shooting. And did you shoot the label at the same time, Sam?
+Come, I _should_ like to look at that label!'
+
+But the wretched Sam was off at a bolt, faster than a police pursuit
+would have sent him, while Josh guffawed joyously. To be 'rotted' by
+Father Sturt was the true Jago terror, but to the Jagos looking on it
+was pure delight. Theft was a piece of the Jago nature; but at least
+Father Sturt could wither the pride of it by such ridicule as the Jago
+could understand.
+
+'There--he's very bashful for a sportsman, isn't he, Josh?' the vicar
+proceeded. 'But you must come and see the club at once. You shall be a
+member.'
+
+Josh spent near an hour in the new buildings. Father Sturt showed him
+the club, the night shelter, the church, and his own little rooms. He
+asked, too, much about Josh's intentions for the future. Of course, Josh
+was 'going to look for a job.' Father Sturt knew he would say that.
+Every Jago had been going to look for a job ever since the vicar first
+came to the place. But he professed to take Josh's word seriously, and
+offered to try to get him taken on as a plasterer at some of the new
+County Council buildings. He flattered Josh by reminding him of his
+command of a regular trade. Josh was a man with opportunities, and he
+should be above the pitiable expedients of the poor untradesmanlike
+about him. Indeed, he should leave the Jago altogether, with his family,
+and start afresh in a new place, a reputable mechanic.
+
+To these things Josh Perrott listened with fidgety deference, answering
+only 'Yus, Father,' when it seemed to be necessary. In the end he
+promised to 'think it over,' which meant nothing, as the parson well
+knew. And in the mood in which Josh came away he would gladly have
+risked another lagging to serve Father Sturt's convenience; but he would
+rather have suffered one than take Father Sturt's advice.
+
+He made the day a holiday. He had been told that he was in for a little
+excitement, for it was held that fitting time had arrived for another
+scrap with Dove Lane; but the affair was not yet moving. Snob Spicer had
+broken a window with a Dove-Laner's head, it was true, but nothing had
+come of it, and etiquette demanded that the next card should be played
+by Dove Lane. For the present, the Jago was content to take thought for
+Josh's 'friendly lead.' Such a thing was everybody's right on return
+from a lagging, and this one was fixed for a night next week.
+
+All that day Mr Weech looked out anxiously, but Josh Perrott never
+passed his way.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+Bill Rann called for Josh early the next morning, and they strolled down
+Old Jago Street in close communion.
+
+'Are you on for a job?' asked Bill. ''Cos I got one cut an' dried--a
+topper, an' safe as 'ouses.'
+
+'Wot sort o' job's this?'
+
+'Wy a bust--unless we can screw it.'
+
+This meant a breaking-in, with a possibility of a quieter entrance by
+means of keys. It was unpleasantly suggestive of Josh's last exploit,
+but he answered: 'Awright. Depends, o' course.'
+
+'O, it's a good un.' Bill Rann grinned for no obvious reason, and
+slapped his leg to express rapturous amusement. 'It's a good un--you can
+take yer davy o' that. I bin a thinkin' about it for a fortnight, but
+it wants two. Damme, it's nobby!' And Bill Rann grinned again, and made
+two taps of a step-dance. 'Wotjer think,' he pursued, suddenly serious,
+'wotjer think o' screwin' a fence?'
+
+It was a novel notion, but in Josh's mind, at first flush, it seemed
+unsportmanlike. 'Wot fence?' asked Josh.
+
+Bill Rann's grin burst wide again. He bent low, with outstretched chin,
+and stuck his elbows out as he answered: 'Wy, ole Weech!'
+
+Josh bared his teeth--but with no smile--looking sharply in the other's
+upturned face. Bill Rann, bent nearly double, and with hands in pockets,
+flapped his arms in the manner of wings, chuckled aloud, and, jerking
+his feet back and forth, went elaborately through the first movement of
+the gallows-flap. 'Eh? eh?' said he. ''Ow's that strike ye, ole cock?'
+
+Josh answered not, but his parted lips stretched wide, and his
+tongue-tip passed quickly over them while he thought.
+
+'It'll be a fair cop for 'im,' Bill pursued, eagerly. ''E's treated us
+all pretty mean, one time or other. Wy, I bet 'e _owes_ us fifty quid
+atween us, wot with all the times 'e's squeeged us for a bit. It'll on'y
+be goin' to bring away our own stuff!'
+
+'G-r-r-r!' Josh growled, glaring fiercely; 'it was 'im as put me away
+for my laggin'! Bleed'n' swine!'
+
+Bill Rann stopped, surprised. 'Wot--'im?' he exclaimed. 'Ole Weech
+narked ye? 'Owjer know that?'
+
+Josh told the tale of his negotiations in the matter of the Mogul's
+watch, and described Weech's terror at sight of his dash at the
+shop-door. 'I'm on,' said Josh in conclusion. 'It's one way o' payin'
+'im, an' it'll bring a bit in. On'y _'e_ better not show 'isself w'ile
+I'm abaat! _'E_ wouldn't git auf with a punch on the chin, like the
+bloke at 'Ighbury!' Josh Perrott ended with a tigerish snarl and a white
+spot at the curl of each of his nostrils.
+
+'Blimy!' said Bill Rann; 'an' so it was 'im, was it? I often wondered
+'oo you meant. Well, flimpin' 'im's the best way. Won't 'e sing a
+bleed'n' 'ymn w'en 'e finds 'is stuff weeded!' Bill flung back his
+head, and laughed again. 'But there,--let's lay it out.' And the two men
+fell to the discussion of methods.
+
+Weech's back-fence was to be his undoing. It was the obvious plan. The
+front shutters were impracticable in such a place as Meakin Street; but
+the alleys in the rear were a perfect approach. Bill Rann had surveyed
+the spot attentively, and, after expert consideration, he had selected
+the wash-house window as the point of entrance. Old boxes and
+packing-wood littered the yard, and it would be easy to mount a selected
+box, shift the catch of the little window, and wriggle in, feet first,
+without noise. True, the door between the wash-house and the other rooms
+might be fastened, but it could be worked at under cover; and Bill Rann
+had a belief that there must be a good deal of 'stuff' in the wash-house
+itself. There would be nobody in the house but Weech, because the
+wretched old woman, who swept the floors and cooked bloaters, was sent
+away at night; so that every room must be unoccupied but one.
+
+As for tools, Josh had none, but Bill Rann undertook to provide them;
+and in the matter of time it was considered that that same night would
+be as good as any. It would be better than most, in fact, for it was
+Wednesday, and Bill Rann had observed that Mr Weech went to the bank in
+High Street, Shoreditch, pretty regularly on Thursday mornings.
+
+This day also Mr Weech kept a careful watch for Josh Perrott, but saw
+him not.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+Hannah Perrott did her best to keep Josh from going out that night. She
+did not explain her objections, because she did not know precisely what
+they were, though they were in some sort prompted by his manner; and it
+was solely because of her constitutional inability to urge them with any
+persistence that she escaped forcible retort. For Josh was in a savage
+and self-centred mood.
+
+'Wy, wot's up?' asked Bill Rann, when they met, looking doubtfully in
+his pal's face. 'You ain't bin boozin', 'ave ye?'
+
+Josh repelled the question with a snarl. 'No I ain't,' he said. 'Got the
+tools?' There was a thickness in his voice, with a wildness in his eye,
+that might well explain his partner's doubt.
+
+'Yus. Come under the light. I couldn't git no twirls, an' we sha'n't
+want 'em. 'Ere's a screwdriver, an' two gimlets, an' a knife for the
+winderketch, an' a little james, an' a neddy--'
+
+'A neddy!' Josh cut in, scornfully pointing his thumb at the instrument,
+which some call life-preserver. 'A neddy for Weech! G-r-r-r! I might
+take a neddy to a _man_!'
+
+'That's awright,' Bill replied. 'But it 'ud frighten 'im pretty well,
+wouldn't it? Look 'ere. S'pose we can't find the oof. W'y shouldn't we
+wake up Mr Weech very quiet an' respeckful, an' ask 'im t' 'elp us? 'E's
+all alone, an' I'm sure 'e'll be glad to 'blige, w'en 'e sees this 'ere
+neddy, without waitin' for a tap. W'y, blimy, I b'lieve 'e'd be afraid
+to sing out any'ow, for fear o' bringin' in the coppers to find all the
+stuff 'e's bought on the crook! It's all done, once we're inside!'
+
+It was near midnight, and Bill Rann had observed Weech putting up his
+shutters at eleven. So the two Jagos walked slowly along Meakin Street,
+on the side opposite Weech's, with sharp eyes for the windows.
+
+All was quiet; there was no visible light--none from the skylight over
+the shop door, none from the window above, none from the garret window
+above that. They passed on, crossed the road, strolled back, and
+listened at the door; there was no sound from within. The clock in a
+distant steeple struck twelve, and was joined at the fourth stroke by
+the loud bell of St Leonards, hard by; and ere the last mild note had
+sounded from the farthest clock in the awakened chorus, Josh Perrott and
+Bill Rann had taken the next turning, and were pushing their way to the
+alleys behind Weech's.
+
+Foul rat-runs, these alleys, not to be traversed by a stranger. Josh and
+Bill plunged into one narrow archway after another, each of which might
+have been the private passage of a house, and came at last, stealthy and
+unseen, into the muddy yard.
+
+Weech's back-fence was before them, and black house-backs crowded them
+round. There were but one or two lights in the windows, and those
+windows were shut and curtained. The rear of Weech's house was black and
+silent as the front. They peered over the fence. The yard was
+pitch-dark, but faint angular tokens here and there told of heaped boxes
+and lumber. 'We won't tip 'im the whistle this time,' whispered Bill
+Rann, with a smothered chuckle. 'Over!'
+
+He bent his knee, and Josh straddled from it over the rickety fence with
+quiet care, and lowered himself gingerly on the other side. 'Clear
+'ere,' he whispered. 'Come on.' Since Bill's display of the tools Josh
+had scarce spoken a word. Bill wondered at his taciturnity, but
+respected it as a business-like quality in the circumstances.
+
+It was but a matter of four or five yards to the wash-house window, but
+they bent and felt their way. Josh took up an old lemonade-case as he
+went, and planted it on the ground below the window, stretching his hand
+for the knife as he did so. And now he took command and foremost place.
+
+It was an old shoemaker's knife, with too long a handle; for there was a
+skew-joint in the sash, and the knife would not bend. Presently Bill
+Rann, below, could see that Josh was cutting away the putty from the
+pane, and in five minutes the pane itself was put into his hand. He
+stooped, and laid it noiselessly on the soft ground.
+
+Josh turned the catch and lifted the sash. There was some noise, but not
+much, as he pushed the frame up evenly, with a thumb at each side. They
+waited; but it was quite still, and Josh, sitting on the sill,
+manoeuvred his legs, one at a time, through the narrow opening. Then,
+turning over, he let himself down, and beckoned Bill Rann to follow.
+
+Bill Rann had a small tin box, with an inch of candle on the inside of
+one end, so that when the wick was lit the contrivance made a simple but
+an effective lantern, the light whereof shone in front alone, and could
+be extinguished at a puff. Now a match was struck, and a quick view
+taken of the wash-house.
+
+There was not much about; only cracked and greasy plates, jars, tins,
+pots and pans, and in a corner a miscellaneous heap, plainly cheap
+pilferings, covered with a bit of old carpet. The air was offensive with
+the characteristic smell of Weech's--the smell of stale pickles.
+
+'There ain't nothin' to waste time over 'ere,' said Josh, aloud. 'Come
+on!'
+
+'Shut up, you damn fool!' exclaimed Bill Rann, in a whisper. 'D'jer want
+to wake 'im?'
+
+'Umph! Why not?' was the reply, still aloud. Bill began to feel that his
+pal was really drunk. But, silent once more, Josh applied himself to the
+door of the inner room. It was crank and old, worn and battered at the
+edges. Josh forced the wedge end of the jemmy through the jamb,
+splintering the perished wood of the frame, and, with a push, forced the
+striking-box of the lock off its screws. There was still a bolt at the
+top; that at the bottom had lost its catch--but this gave as little
+trouble as the lock. Bill Rann strained the door open from below, the
+jemmy entered readily, and in a few seconds the top bolt was in like
+case with the bottom.
+
+They entered the room behind the shop, and it was innocent and
+disappointing. A loo table, four horse-hair-covered chairs, a mirror,
+three coloured wall-texts, two china figures and a cheap walnut
+sideboard--that was all. The slow step of a policeman without stopped,
+with a push at the shop-door, to test its fastenings, and then went on;
+and stronger than ever was the smell of stale pickles.
+
+To try the shop would be mere waste of time. Weech's pocket was the
+till, and there could be no other prize. A door at the side of the room,
+latched simply, gave on the stairs. 'Take auf yer boots,' Bill
+whispered, unlacing his own, and slinging them across his shoulder by
+the tied laces.
+
+But Josh would not, and he said so, with an oath. Bill could not
+understand him. _Could_ it be drink? Bill wished him a mile away.
+'Awright,' he whispered, 'you set down 'ere w'ile I slip upstairs an'
+take a peep. I bet the stuffs in the garret. Best on'y one goes, quiet.'
+
+Josh sat, and Bill, taking his lantern, crept up the stairs noiselessly,
+save for one creak. He gained the stair-head, listened a moment,
+tip-toed along the small landing, and was half-way up the steep and
+narrow garret-stairs, when he heard a sound, and stopped. Somebody was
+on the lower flight.
+
+There was a heavy tread, with the kick of a boot against stair or
+skirting-board; and then came noisy steps along the landing. Josh was
+coming up in his boots! Bill Rann was at his wits' end. He backed down
+the garret-stairs, and met Josh at the foot. 'Are ye balmy?' he hissed
+fiercely, catching Josh by the collar and pulling him into the turn of
+the stairs. 'D'ye want another five stretch?'
+
+A loud creak and a soft thump sounded from behind the door at the other
+end of the landing; and then a match was struck. 'Keep back on the
+stairs,' Bill whispered. ''E's 'eard you.' Josh sat on a stair,
+perfectly still, with his legs drawn up out of sight from the door. Bill
+blew out his light. He would not venture open intimidation of Weech now,
+with Josh half muzzy, lest some burst of lunacy brought in the police.
+
+A soft treading of bare feet, the squeak of a door-handle, a light on
+the landing, and Aaron Weech stood at his open door in his shirt,
+candle in hand, his hair rumpled, his head aside, his mouth a little
+open, his unconscious gaze upward; listening intently. He took a slight
+step forward. And then Bill Rann's heart turned over and over.
+
+For Josh Perrott sprang from the stair, and, his shoulders humped and
+his face thrust out, walked deliberately across the landing. Weech
+turned his head quickly; his chin fell on his chest as by jaw-break;
+there were but dots amid the white of his eyes; his head lay slowly
+back, as the candle tilted and shot its grease on the floor. The door
+swung wider as his shoulder struck it, and he screamed, like a rabbit
+that sees a stoat. Then, with a wrench, he turned, letting drop the
+candle, and ran shrieking to the window, flung it open, and yelled into
+the black street. ''Elp! 'Elp! P'lice! _Murder! Murder! Murder!
+Murder!_'
+
+'Run, Josh--run, ye blasted fool!' roared Bill Rann, bounding across the
+landing, and snatching at his arm.
+
+'Go on--go on! I'm comin'!' Josh answered without turning his head. And
+Bill took the bottom flight at a jump. The candle flared as it lay on
+the floor, and spread a greasy pool about it.
+
+'_Murder! Murder! Mu-r-r--_'
+
+Josh had the man by the shoulder, swung him back from the window,
+gripped his throat, and dragged him across the carpet as he might drag a
+cat, while Weech's arms waved uselessly, and his feet feebly sought a
+hold on the floor.
+
+'Now!' cried Josh Perrott, glaring on the writhen face below his own,
+and raising his case-knife in the manner of a cleaver, 'sing a hymn!
+Sing the hymn as'll do ye most good! You'll cheat me when ye can, an'
+when ye can't you'll put me five year in stir, eh? Sing a hymn, ye
+snivellin' nark!'
+
+From the street there came the noise of many hurrying feet and of a
+scattered shouting. Josh Perrott made an offer at slashing the slaty
+face, checked his arm, and went on.
+
+'You'll put down somethin' 'an'some at my break, will ye? An' you'll
+starve my wife an' kids all to bones an' teeth four year! Sing a hymn,
+ye cur!'
+
+He made another feint at slashing. Men were beating thunderously at the
+shop door, and there were shrill whistles.
+
+'Won't sing yer hymn? There ain't much time! My boy was goin' straight,
+an' earnin' wages: someone got 'im chucked. A man 'as time to think
+things out, in stir! Sing, ye son of a cow! Sing! Sing!'
+
+Twice the knife hacked the livid face. But the third hack was below the
+chin; and the face fell back.
+
+The bubbling Thing dropped in a heap, and put out the flaring candle.
+Without, the shouts gathered to a roar, and the door shook under heavy
+blows. 'Open--open the door!' cried a deep voice.
+
+He looked from the open window. There was a scrambling crowd, and more
+people were running in. Windows gaped, and thrust out noisy heads. The
+flash of a bull's-eye dazzled him, and he staggered back. 'Perrott!
+Perrott!' came a shout. He had but glanced out, but he was recognised.
+
+He threw down his knife, and made for the landing, slipping on the wet
+floor and stumbling against the Heap. There were shouts from behind the
+house now; they were few, but they were close. He dashed up the narrow
+stairs, floundered through the back garret, over bags and boxes and
+heaps of mingled commodities, and threw up the sash. Men were stumbling
+invisibly in the dark yard below. He got upon the sill, swung round by
+the dormer-frame, and went, hands and knees, along the roof. Yells and
+loud whistles rose clamant in the air, and his own name was shouted to
+and fro. Then the blows on the shop-door ceased with a splintering
+crash, and there was a trampling of feet on floor-boards.
+
+The roofs were irregular in shape and height, and his progress was slow.
+He aimed at reaching the roof of Father Sturt's old club building, still
+empty. He had had this in mind from the moment he climbed from the
+garret-window; for in the work of setting the drains in order an iron
+ventilating pipe had been carried up from the stable-yard to well above
+the roof. It was a stout pipe, close by the wall, to which it was
+clamped with iron attachments. Four years had passed since he had seen
+it, and he trusted to luck to find it still standing, for it seemed his
+only chance. Down below people scampered and shouted. Crowds had sprung
+out of the dark night as by magic; and the police--they must have been
+lying in wait in scores. It seemed a mere matter of seconds since he had
+scaled the back fence; and now people were tearing about the house
+behind him, and shouting out of windows to those below. He hoped that
+the iron pipe might not be gone.
+
+Good--it was there. He peered from the parapet down into the
+stable-yard, and the place seemed empty. He gripped the pipe with hands
+and knees, and descended.
+
+The alley had no back way: he must take his chance in Meakin Street. He
+peeped. At the street end there was a dark obstruction, set with spots
+of light: a row of police. That way was shut; he must try the Jago--Luck
+Row was almost opposite, and no Jago would betray him. The hunters were
+already on the roofs. Men shouted up to them from the street, and kept
+pace with them, coming nearer. He took a breath and dashed across,
+knocking a man over at the corner.
+
+Up Luck Row, into Old Jago Street he ran, past his own home, and across
+to a black doorway, just as Father Sturt, roused by the persistent din,
+opened his window. The passage was empty, and for an instant he paused,
+breathless. But there were howls without, and the pelting of many feet.
+The man knocked over at the corner had given the alarm, and the hunt was
+up.
+
+Into the back-yard and over the fence; through another passage into New
+Jago Street; with a notion to gain the courts by Honey Lane and so away.
+But he was thinking of the Jago as it had been--he had forgotten the
+demolishment. As he neared Jago Row the place of it lay suddenly before
+him--an open waste of eighty yards square, skirted by the straight
+streets and the yellow barracks, with the Board School standing dark
+among them. And along the straight streets more men were rushing, and
+more police. They were new-comers: why not venture over? He rubbed his
+cheek, for something like a film of gum clung to it. Then he
+remembered, and peered closely at his hands. Blood, sticking and drying
+and peeling; blood on hands and face, blood on clothes, without a doubt.
+To go abroad thus were to court arrest, were he known or not. It must be
+got off; but how? To go home was to give himself up. The police were
+there long since--they swarmed the Jago through. Some half-dismantled
+houses stood at hand, and he made for the nearest.
+
+There were cellars under these houses, reached from the back-yards. Many
+a Jago had been born, had lived, and had died in such a place. A cellar
+would hide him for an hour, while he groped himself clean as he might.
+Broken brickwork littered the space that had been the back-yard. Feeling
+in the dark for the steps, which stood in a little pit, his foot turned
+on a stone, and he pitched headlong.
+
+The cellar itself was littered with rubbish, and he lay among it a
+little while, breathless and bruised. When he tried to rise, he found
+his ankle useless. It was the old sprain, got at Mother Gapp's before
+his lagging, and ever ready to assert itself. He sat among the
+brickbats to pull off the boot--that was foul and sticky too--and he
+rubbed the ankle. He had been a fool to think of the cellar: why not any
+corner among the walls above? He had given way to the mere panic
+instinct to burrow, to hide himself in a hole, and he had chosen one
+wherefrom there was no second way of escape--none at all but by the
+steps he had fallen in at. Far better to have struck out boldly across
+the streets by Columbia Market to the canal: who could have seen the
+smears in the darkness? And in the canal he might have washed the lot
+away, secure from observation, under a bridge. The thing might be
+possible, even now, if he could stand the pain. But no, the foot was
+useless when he tried it. He was trapped like a rat. He rubbed and
+kneaded the ankle diligently, and managed to draw the boot on. But stand
+on both legs he could not. He might have crawled up the steps on hands
+and knees, but what was the use of that? So he sat, and waited.
+
+Knots of men went hurrying by, and he caught snatches of their talk.
+There had been a murder--a man was murdered in his bed--it was a
+woman--a man had murdered his wife--there were two murders--three--the
+tale went every way, but it was always Murder, Murder, Murder. Everybody
+was saying Murder: till in the passing footsteps, in the vague shouts in
+the distance, and presently in the mere black about him he heard the
+word still--Murder, Murder, Murder. He fell to contrasting the whispered
+fancy with the real screams in that bedroom. He wondered what Bill Rann
+thought of it all, and what had become of the james and the gimlets. He
+pictured the crowd in Old Jago Street, pushing into his room, talking
+about him, telling the news. He wondered if Hannah had been asleep when
+they came, and what she said when they told her. And more people hurried
+past the ruined house, all talking Murder, Murder, still Murder.
+
+The foot was horribly painful. Was it swelling? Yes, he thought it was;
+he rubbed it again. What would Dicky do? If only Dicky knew where he
+was! That might help. There was a new burst of shouts in the distance.
+What was that? Perhaps they had caught Bill Rann; but that was unlikely.
+They knew nothing of Bill--they had seen but one man. Perhaps they were
+carrying away the Heap on a shutter: that would be no nice job,
+especially down the steep stairs. There had been very little in the
+wash-house, and nothing in the next room; the garrets were pretty full
+of odd things, but no doubt the money was in the bedroom. The smell of
+stale pickles was very strong.
+
+So his thoughts chased one another--eager, trivial, crowded--till his
+head ached with their splitting haste. To take heed for the future, to
+plan escape, to design expedients--these were merely impossible, sitting
+there inactive in the dark. He thought of the pipe he had slid down,
+what it cost, why they put it there, who the man was that he ran against
+at Luck Row, whether or not he hurt him, what the police would do with
+the bloaters and cake and bacon at the shop, and--again--of the smell of
+stale pickles.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Father Sturt was up and dressed, standing guard on the landing outside
+the Perrotts' door. The stairs were full of Jagos--mostly
+women--constantly joined by new-comers, all anxious to batter the door
+and belabour the hidden family with noisy sympathy and sedulous
+inquiries: all, that is, except the oldest Mrs Walsh in the Jago, who,
+possessed by an unshakable conviction that Josh's wife must have 'druv
+'im to it,' had come in a shawl and a petticoat to give Hannah a piece
+of her mind. But all were driven back and sent grumbling away, by Father
+Sturt.
+
+Every passage from the Jago was held by the police, and a search from
+house to house was begun. With clear consciences the Jagos all could
+deny any knowledge of Josh Perrott's whereabouts; but a clear conscience
+was little valued in those parts, and one after another affirmed point
+blank that the man seen at the window was not Perrott at all, but a
+stranger who lived a long way off. This, of course, less by way of
+favouring the fugitive than of baffling the police: the Jago's first
+duty. But the police knew the worth of such talk, and the search went
+on.
+
+Thus it came to pass that in the grey of the morning a party in New
+Jago Street, after telling each other that the ruins must be carefully
+examined, climbed among the rubbish, and were startled by a voice from
+underground.
+
+'Awright,' cried Josh Perrott in the cellar. 'I'm done; it's a cop. Come
+an' 'elp me out o' this 'ole.'
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+The Lion and Unicorn had been fresh gilt since he was there before, but
+the white-headed old gaoler in the dock was much the same. And the big
+sword--what did they have a big sword for, stuck up there, over the red
+cushions, and what was the use of a sword six foot long? But perhaps it
+wasn't six foot after all--it looked longer than it was; and no doubt it
+was only for show, and probably a dummy with no blade. There was a
+well-dressed black man sitting down below among the lawyers. What did he
+want? Why did they let him in? A nice thing--to be made a show of, for
+niggers! And Josh Perrott loosened his neckcloth with an indignant tug
+of the forefinger, and went off into another train of thought. He had a
+throbbing, wavering headache, the outcome of thinking so hard about so
+many things. They were small things, and had nothing to do with his own
+business; but there were so many of them, and they all had to be got
+through at such a pace, and one thing led to another.
+
+Ever since they had taken him he had been oppressed by this plague of
+galloping thought, with few intervals of rest, when he could consider
+immediate concerns. But of these he made little trouble. The thing was
+done. Very well then, he would take his gruel like a man. He had done
+many a worse thing, he said, that had been thought less of.
+
+The evidence was a nuisance. What was the good of it all? Over and over
+and over again. At the inquest, at the police court, and now here.
+Repeated, laboriously taken down, and repeated again. And now it was
+worse than ever, for the judge insisted on making a note of everything,
+and wrote it down slowly, a word at a time. The witnesses were like
+barrel-organs, producing the same old tune mechanically, without
+changing a note. There was the policeman who was in Meakin Street at
+twelve-thirty on the morning of the fourth of the month, when he heard
+cries of Murder, and proceeded to the coffee-shop. There was the other
+policeman who also 'proceeded' there, and recognised the prisoner, whom
+he knew, at the first-floor window. And there was the sergeant who had
+found him in the cellar, and the doctor who had made an examination, and
+the knife, and the boots, and all of it. It was Murder, Murder, Murder
+still. Why? Wasn't it plain enough? He felt some interest in what was
+coming--in the sentence, and the black cap, and so on--never having seen
+a murder trial before. But all this repetition oppressed him vaguely
+amid the innumerable things he had to think of, one thing leading to
+another.
+
+Hannah and Dicky were there, sitting together behind the glass partition
+that rose at the side of the dock. Hannah's face was down in her hands,
+and Dicky's face was thin and white, and he sat with his neck stretched,
+his lips apart, his head aside to catch the smallest word. His eyes,
+too, were red with strained, unwinking attention. Josh felt vaguely
+that they might keep a bolder face, as he did himself. His sprained foot
+was still far from well, but he stood up, putting his weight on the
+other. He might have been allowed to sit if he had asked, but that would
+look like weakness.
+
+There was another judge this time, an older one, with spectacles. He had
+come solemnly in, after lunch, with a bunch of flowers in his hand, and
+Josh thought he made an odd figure in his long red gown. Why did he sit
+at the end of the bench, instead of in the middle, under the long sword?
+Perhaps the old gentleman, who sat there for a little while and then
+went away, was the Lord Mayor. That would account for it. There was
+another room behind the bedroom at Weech's, which he had never thought
+about. Perhaps the money was there, after all. Could they have missed
+any hiding place in the shop parlour? No: there was the round table,
+with the four chairs about it, and the little sideboard; besides the
+texts on the wall, and two china figures on the mantel-piece--that was
+all. There was a copper in the wash-house, but there was nothing in it.
+The garret was a very good place to keep things in; but there was a
+strong smell of stale pickles. He could smell it now--he had smelt it
+ever since.
+
+The judge stopped a witness to speak of a draught from a window. Josh
+Perrott watched the shutting of the window--they did it with a cord. He
+had not noticed a draught himself. But pigeons were flying outside the
+panes and resting on the chimney-stacks. Pud Palmer tried to keep
+pigeons in Jago Row, but one morning the trap was found empty. A
+poulterer gave fourpence each for them. They were ticketed at
+eighteenpence a pair in the shop, and that was fivepence profit apiece
+for the poulterer. Tenpence a pair profit on eleven pairs was nearly ten
+shillings--ten shillings all but tenpence. They wouldn't have given any
+more in Club Row. A man had a four-legged linnet in Club Row, but there
+was a show in Bethnal Green Road with a two-headed sheep. It was outside
+there that Ginger Stagg was pinched for lob-crawling. And so on, and so
+on, till his head buzzed again.
+
+His counsel was saying something. How long had he been talking? What was
+the good of it? He had told him that he had no defence. The lawyer was
+enlarging on the dead man's iniquities, talking of provocation, and the
+heat of passion, and the like. He was aiming desperately at a
+recommendation to mercy. That was mere foolery.
+
+But presently the judge began to sum up. They were coming to something
+at last. But it was merely the thrice-told evidence once more. The judge
+blinked at his notes, and went at it again; the policeman with his
+whistle, and the other with his lantern, and the doctor, and the
+sergeant, and the rest. It was shorter this time, though. Josh Perrott
+turned and looked at the clock behind him, with the faces over it,
+peering from the gallery. But when he turned to face the judge again he
+had forgotten the time, and crowded trivialities were racing through the
+narrow gates of his brain once more.
+
+There was a cry for silence, and then a fresh voice spoke. 'Gentlemen of
+the jury, have you agreed upon your verdict?'
+
+'We have.' The foreman was an agitated, colourless man, and he spoke in
+a low tone.
+
+'Do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty, or not guilty?'
+
+'Guilty.'
+
+Yes, that was right; this was the real business. His head was clear and
+ready now.
+
+'And is that the verdict of you all?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+Was that Hannah sobbing?
+
+A pale parson in his black gown came walking along by the bench, and
+stood like a tall ghost at the judge's side, his eyes raised and his
+hands clasped. The judge took a black thing from the seat beside him,
+and arranged it on his head. It was a sort of soft mortarboard, Josh
+noted curiously, with a large silk tassel hanging over one side, giving
+the judge, with his wig and his spectacles and his red gown, a horribly
+jaunty look. No brain could be clearer than Josh Perrott's now.
+
+'Prisoner at the bar, have you anything to say why sentence of death
+should not be passed on you according to law?'
+
+'No sir--I done it. On'y 'e was a worse man than me!'
+
+The Clerk of Arraigns sank into his place, and the judge spoke.
+
+'Joshua Perrott, you have been convicted, on evidence that can leave no
+doubt whatever of your guilt in the mind of any rational person, of the
+horrible crime of wilful murder. The circumstances of your awful offence
+there is no need to recapitulate, but they were of the most brutal and
+shocking character. You deliberately, and with preparation, broke into
+the house of the man whose death you have shortly to answer for in a
+higher court than this: whether you broke in with a design of robbery as
+well as of revenge by murder I know not, nor is it my duty to consider:
+but you there, with every circumstance of callous ferocity, sent the
+wretched man to that last account which you must shortly render for
+yourself. Of the ill-spent life of that miserable man, your victim, it
+is not for me to speak, nor for you to think. And I do most earnestly
+beseech you to use the short time yet remaining to you on this earth in
+true repentance, and in making your peace with Almighty God. It is my
+duty to pronounce sentence of that punishment which not I, but the law
+of this country, imposes for the crime which you have committed. The
+sentence of the Court is: that you be taken to the place whence you
+came, and thence to a place of execution: and that you be there Hanged
+by the Neck till you be Dead: and may the Lord have Mercy on your Soul!'
+
+'Amen!' It was from the tall black figure.
+
+Well, well, that was over. The gaoler touched his arm. Right. But first
+he took a quick glance through the glass partition. Hannah was falling
+over, or something,--a mere rusty swaying bundle,--and Dicky was holding
+her up with both arms. Dicky's face was damp and grey, and twitching
+lines were in his cheeks. Josh took a step toward the partition, but
+they hurried him away.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+All this hard thinking would be over in half an hour or so. What was to
+come now didn't matter; no more than a mere punch in the eye. The worst
+was over on Saturday, and he had got through that all right. Hannah was
+very bad, and so was Dicky. Em cried in a bewildered sort of way,
+because the others did. Little Josh, conceiving that his father was
+somehow causing all the tears, kicked and swore at him. He tried to get
+Hannah to smile at this, but it was no go; and they had to carry her out
+at last. Dicky was well-plucked though, bad as he was. He felt him shake
+and choke when he kissed him, but he walked out straight and steady,
+with the two children. Well, it was over....
+
+He hoped they would get up a break in the Jago for Hannah and the
+youngsters. His own break had never come off--they owed him one. The
+last break he was at was at Mother Gapp's, before the Dove-Laners fell
+through the floor. It must have cost Mother Gapp a deal of money to put
+in the new floor; but then she must have made a lot in her time, what
+with one thing and another. There was the fencing, and the houses she
+had bought in Honey Lane, and the two fourpenny doss-houses in Hoxton
+that they said were hers, and--well, nobody could say what else. Some
+said she came of the gipsies that used to live at the Mount years ago.
+The Mount was a pretty thick place now, but not so thick as the Jago:
+the Jagos were thick as glue and wide as Broad Street. Bob the Bender
+fell in Broad Street, toy-getting, and got a stretch and a half....
+
+Yes, yes, of course, they always tolled a bell. But it was rather
+confusing, with things to think about.
+
+Ah, they had come at last. Come, there was nothing more to think about
+now; nothing but to take it game. Hold tight--Jago hold tight.... 'No
+thank you, sir--nothing to say, special. On'y much obliged to ye, thank
+ye kindly, for the grub an'--an' bein' kind an' wot not. Thanks all of
+ye, come to that. Specially you, sir.' It was the tall black figure
+again....
+
+What, this was the chap, was it? Seedy-looking. Sort of undertaker's man
+to look at. All right--straps. Not cords to tie, then. Waist; wrists;
+elbows; more straps dangling below--do them presently. This was how they
+did it, then.... This way?
+
+'I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth
+in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and
+believeth in Me shall never die.'
+
+A very big gate, this, all iron, painted white. Round to the right. Not
+very far, they told him. It was dark in the passage, but the door led
+into the yard, where it was light and open, and sparrows were
+twittering. Another door: in a shed.
+
+This was the place. All white, everywhere--frame too; not black after
+all. Up the steps.... Hold tight: not much longer. Stand there? Very
+well.
+
+'Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full
+of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower: he fleeth as it
+were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.
+
+'In the midst of life....'
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+It was but a little crowd that stood at the Old Bailey corner while the
+bell tolled, to watch for the black flag. This was not a popular murder.
+Josh Perrott was not a man who had been bred to better things; he did
+not snivel and rant in the dock; and he had not butchered his wife nor
+his child, nor anybody with a claim on his gratitude or affection; so
+that nobody sympathised with him, nor got up a petition for pardon, nor
+wrote tearful letters to the newspapers. And the crowd that watched for
+the black flag was a small one, and half of it came from the Jago.
+
+While it was watching, and while the bell was tolling, a knot of people
+stood at the Perrotts' front-doorway, in Old Jago Street. Father Sturt
+went across as soon as the sleepers of the night had been seen away
+from the shelter, and spoke to Kiddo Cook, who stood at the stair-foot
+to drive off intruders.
+
+'They say she's been settin' up all night, Father,' Kiddo reported, in a
+hushed voice. 'An' Poll's jest looked in at the winder from Walsh's, and
+says she can see 'em all kneelin' round a chair with that little clock
+o' theirs on it. It's--it's more'n 'alf an hour yut.'
+
+'I shall come here myself presently, and relieve you. Can you wait? You
+mustn't neglect trade, you know.'
+
+'I'll wait all day, Father, if ye like. Nobody sha'n't disturb 'em.'
+
+When Father Sturt returned from his errand, 'Have you heard anything?'
+he asked.
+
+'No, Father,' answered Kiddo Cook. 'They ain't moved.'
+
+There were two faint notes from a distant steeple, and then the bell of
+St Leonards beat out the inexorable hour.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+Kiddo Cook prospered. The stall was a present fact, and the awning was
+not far off; indeed, he was vigilantly in search of a second-hand one,
+not too much worn. But with all his affluence he was not often drunk.
+Nothing could be better than his pitch--right out in the High Street, in
+the busiest part, and hard by the London and County branch bank. They
+called it Kiddo's Bank in the Jago, and made jokes about alleged
+deposits of his. If you bought a penn'orth of greens from Kiddo, said
+facetious Jagos, he didn't condescend to take the money himself; he gave
+you a slip of paper, and you paid at the bank. And Kiddo had indulged in
+a stroke of magnificence that no other Jago would have thought of. He
+had taken _two_ rooms, in the new County Council dwellings. The secret
+was that Father Sturt had agreed to marry Kiddo Cook and Pigeony Poll.
+There would be plenty for both to do, what with the stall and the
+regular round with the barrow.
+
+The wedding-day came when Hannah Perrott had been one week a widow. For
+a few days Father Sturt had left her alone, and had guarded her privacy.
+Then, seeing that she gave no sign, he went with what quiet comfort he
+might, and bespoke her attention to her concerns. He invented some
+charing work in his rooms for her. She did it very badly, and if he left
+her long alone, she would be found on the floor, with her face in a
+chair-seat, crying weakly. But the work was something for her to do and
+to think about, and by dint of bustling it and magnifying its
+importance, Father Sturt brought her to some degree of mindfulness and
+calm.
+
+Dicky walked that morning in a sort of numb, embittered fury. What
+should he do now? His devilmost. Spare nobody and stop at nothing. Old
+Beveridge was right that morning years ago. The Jago had got him, and it
+held him fast. Now he went doubly sealed of the outcasts: a Jago with a
+hanged father. Father Sturt talked of work, but who would give _him_
+work? And why do it, in any case? What came of it before? No, he was a
+Jago and the world's enemy; Father Sturt was the only good man in it; as
+for the rest, he would spoil them when he could. There was something for
+to-morrow night, if only he could get calmed down enough by then. A
+builder's yard in Kingsland with an office in a loft, and money in a
+common desk. Tommy Rann had found it, and they must do it together; if
+only he could get this odd numbness off him, and have his head clear. So
+much crying, perhaps, and so much trying not to, till his head was like
+to burst. Deep-eyed and pale, he dragged round into Edge Lane, and so
+into New Jago Street.
+
+Jerry Gullen's canary was harnessed to the barrow, and Jerry himself was
+piling the barrow with rags and bottles. Dicky stood and looked; he
+thought he would rub Canary's head, but then he changed his mind, and
+did not move. Jerry Gullen glanced at him furtively once or twice, and
+then said: 'Good ole moke for wear, ain't 'e?'
+
+'Yus,' Dicky answered moodily, his talk half random. ''E'll peg out soon
+now.'
+
+''Im? Not 'im. Wy, I bet 'e'll live longer'n you will. _'E_ ain't goin'
+to die.'
+
+'I think 'e'd like to,' said Dicky, and slouched on.
+
+Yes, Canary would be better off, dead. So would others. It would be a
+comfortable thing for himself if he could die quietly then and there.
+But it would never do for mother and the children to be left helpless.
+How good for them all to go off easily together, and wake in some
+pleasant place, say a place like Father Sturt's sitting-room, and
+perhaps find--but there, what foolishness!
+
+What was this unendurable stupor that clung about him like a net? He
+knew everything clearly enough, but it was all in an atmosphere of dull
+heedlessness. There would be some relief in doing something violent--in
+smashing something to little pieces with a hammer.
+
+He came to the ruined houses. There was a tumult of yells, and a crowd
+of thirty or forty lads went streaming across the open waste, waving
+sticks.
+
+'Come on! come on, Jago! 'Ere they are!'
+
+A fight! Ah, what more welcome! And Dove Lane, too--Dove Lane, that had
+taken to bawling the taunt, 'Jago cut-throats,' since ...
+
+He was in the thick of the raid. 'Come on, Jago! Jago! 'Ere they are!'
+Past the Board School and through Honey Lane they went, and into Dove
+Lane territory. A small crowd of Dove-Laners broke and fled. Straight
+ahead the Jagos went, till they were suddenly taken in flank at a
+turning by a full Dove Lane mob. The Jagos were broken by the rush, but
+they fought stoutly, and the street was filled with a surge of combat.
+
+'Jago! Jago hold tight!'
+
+Thin, wasted and shaken, Dicky fought like a tiger. He had no stick till
+he floored a Dove-Laner and took his from him, but then he bludgeoned
+apace, callous to every blow, till he fought through the thick, and
+burst out at the edge of the fray. He pulled his cap tight, and swung
+back, almost knocking over, but disregarding, a leather-aproned, furtive
+hunchback, who turned and came at his heels.
+
+'Jago! Jago hold tight!' yelled Dicky Perrott. 'Come on, Father Sturt's
+boys!'
+
+He was down. Just a punch under the arm from behind. As he rolled, face
+under, he caught a single glimpse of the hunchback, running. But what
+was this--all this?
+
+A shout went up. 'Stabbed! Chived! They chived Dicky Perrott!'
+
+The fight melted. Somebody turned Dicky on his back, and he moaned, and
+lay gasping. He lifted his dabbled hands, and looked at them, wondering.
+They tried to lift him, but the blood poured so fast that they put him
+down. Somebody had gone for a surgeon.
+
+'Take me 'ome,' said Dicky, faintly, with an odd gurgle in his voice.
+'Not 'awspital.'
+
+The surgeon came running, with policemen at his heels. He ripped away
+the clothes from about the wound, and shook his head. It was the lung.
+Water was brought, and cloths, and an old door. They put Dicky on the
+door, and carried him toward the surgery; and two lads who stayed by him
+were sent to bring his friends.
+
+The bride and bridegroom, meeting the news on the way home, set off at a
+run, and Father Sturt followed.
+
+'Good Gawd, Dicky,' cried Poll, tearing her way to the shutter as it
+stopped at the surgery door, 'wot's this?'
+
+Dicky's eye fell on the flowered bonnet that graced the wedding, and his
+lip lifted with the shade of a smile. 'Luck, Pidge!'
+
+He was laid out in the surgery. A crowd stood about the door, while
+Father Sturt went in. The vicar lifted his eyebrows questioningly, and
+the surgeon shook his head. It was a matter of minutes.
+
+Father Sturt bent over and took Dicky's hand. 'My poor Dicky,' he said,
+'who did this?'
+
+'Dunno, Fa'er.'
+
+The lie--the staunch Jago lie. Thou shalt not nark.
+
+'Fetch mother an' the kids. Fa'er!'
+
+'Yes, my boy?'
+
+'Tell Mist' Beveridge there's 'nother way out--better.'
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Child of the Jago, by Arthur Morrison
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Child of the Jago, by Arthur Morrison
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Child of the Jago
+
+Author: Arthur Morrison
+
+Release Date: August 3, 2011 [EBook #36958]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHILD OF THE JAGO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
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+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<h1>A CHILD OF THE JAGO</h1>
+
+<h2>BY ARTHUR MORRISON</h2>
+
+<h3>AUTHOR OF 'TALES OF MEAN STREETS'</h3>
+
+
+<p class="center">THIRD EDITION</p>
+
+<p class="center">METHUEN &amp; CO.<br />
+36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.<br />
+LONDON<br />
+1897</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="center">TO<br />
+ARTHUR OSBORNE JAY<br />
+VICAR OF HOLY TRINITY, SHOREDITCH</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>... Woe unto the foolish prophets, that</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>follow their own spirit, and have seen</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>nothing!...</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>Because, even because they have seduced</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>my people, saying, Peace; and there</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>was no peace; and one built up a</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>wall, and lo, others daubed it with</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>untempered mortar:</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>Say unto them which daub it with untempered</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>mortar, that it shall fall:</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>there shall be an overflowing shower;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>and ye, O great hailstones, shall fall;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>and a stormy wind shall rend it.</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><i>Lo, when the wall is fallen, shall it not</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>be said unto you, Where is the daubing</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i4"><i>wherewith ye have daubed it?&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4"><span class="smcap">Ezekiel</span> xiii. 3 ... 10 12.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p class="center">
+<a href="#PREFACE_TO_THE_THIRD_EDITION">PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION</a><br />
+<a href="#I">I</a><br />
+<a href="#II">II</a><br />
+<a href="#III">III</a><br />
+<a href="#IV">IV</a><br />
+<a href="#V">V</a><br />
+<a href="#VI">VI</a><br />
+<a href="#VII">VII</a><br />
+<a href="#VIII">VIII</a><br />
+<a href="#IX">IX</a><br />
+<a href="#X">X</a><br />
+<a href="#XI">XI</a><br />
+<a href="#XII">XII</a><br />
+<a href="#XIII">XIII</a><br />
+<a href="#XIV">XIV</a><br />
+<a href="#XV">XV</a><br />
+<a href="#XVI">XVI</a><br />
+<a href="#XVII">XVII</a><br />
+<a href="#XVIII">XVIII</a><br />
+<a href="#XIX">XIX</a><br />
+<a href="#XX">XX</a><br />
+<a href="#XXI">XXI</a><br />
+<a href="#XXII">XXII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXIII">XXIII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXIV">XXIV</a><br />
+<a href="#XXV">XXV</a><br />
+<a href="#XXVI">XXVI</a><br />
+<a href="#XXVII">XXVII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXVIII">XXVIII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXIX">XXIX</a><br />
+<a href="#XXX">XXX</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXI">XXXI</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXII">XXXII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXIII">XXXIII</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXIV">XXXIV</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXV">XXXV</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXVI">XXXVI</a><br />
+<a href="#XXXVII">XXXVII</a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PREFACE_TO_THE_THIRD_EDITION" id="PREFACE_TO_THE_THIRD_EDITION"></a>PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION</h2>
+
+
+<p>I am glad to take this, the first available opportunity, to acknowledge
+the kindness with which <i>A Child of the Jago</i> has been received: both by
+the reading public, from which I have received many gratifying
+assurances that what I have tried to say has not altogether failed of
+its effect: and by the reviewers, the most of whom have written in very
+indulgent terms.</p>
+
+<p>I think indeed, that I am the more gratified by the fact that this
+reception has not been unanimous: because an outcry and an opposition,
+even from an unimportant minority, are proofs that I have succeeded in
+saying, however imperfectly, something that was worth being said. Under
+the conditions of life as we know it there is no truth worth telling
+that will not interfere with some hearer's comfort. Various objections
+have been made to <i>A Child of the Jago</i>, and many of them had already
+been made to <i>Tales of Mean Streets</i>. And it has been the way of the
+objectors as well as the way of many among the kindest of my critics, to
+call me a 'realist.' The word has been used sometimes, it would seem, in
+praise; sometimes in mere indifference as one uses a phrase of
+convenient description; sometimes by way of an irremediable reproach. It
+is natural, then, not merely that I should wish to examine certain among
+the objections made to my work, but that I should feel some interest in
+the definition and description of a realist. A matter never made clear
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>Now it is a fact that I have never called myself a 'realist,' and I have
+never put forth any work as 'realism.' I decline the labels of the
+schoolmen and the sophisters: being a simple writer of tales, who takes
+whatever means lie to his hand to present life as he sees it; who
+insists on no process; and who refuses to be bound by any formula or
+prescription prepared by the cataloguers and the pigeon-holers of
+literature.</p>
+
+<p>So it happens that when those who use the word 'realist' use it with no
+unanimity of intent and with a loose, inapprehensive application, it is
+not easy for me, who repudiate it altogether, to make a guess at its
+meaning. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the man who is called a
+'realist' is one who, seeing things with his own eyes, discards the
+conventions of the schools, and presents his matter in individual terms
+of art. For awhile the schoolmen abuse him as a realist; and in twenty
+years' time, if his work have life in it, he becomes a classic.
+Constable was called a realist; so was Corot. Who calls these painters
+realists now? The history of Japanese art affords a continuous
+illustration. From the day when Iwasa Matahei impudently arose and dared
+to take his subjects from the daily life of the people, to the day when
+Hiroshigé, casting away the last rag of propriety, adventurously drew a
+cast shadow, in flat defiance of all the canons of Tosa and Kano&mdash;in all
+this time, and through all the crowded history of the School of Ukioyé,
+no artist bringing something of his own to his art but was damned for a
+realist. Even the classic Harunobu did not escape. Look now at the work
+of these men, and the label seems grotesque enough. So it goes through
+the making of all art. A man with the courage of his own vision
+interprets what he sees in fresh terms, and gives to things a new
+reality and an immediate presence. The schoolmen peer with dulled eyes
+from amid the heap of precedents and prescriptions about them, and,
+distracted by seeing a thing sanctioned neither by precedent nor by
+prescription, dub the man realist, and rail against him for that his
+work fits none of their pigeon-holes. And from without the schools many
+cry out and complain: for truth is strong meat, and the weakling stomach
+turns against it, except in minim doses smothered in treacle. Thus we
+hear the feeble plea that the function of imagination is the distortion
+of fact: the piteous demand that the artist should be shut up in a
+flower-garden, and forbidden to peep through the hedge into the world.
+And they who know nothing of beauty, who are innately incapable of
+comprehending it, mistake it for mere prettiness, and call aloud for
+comfits; and among them that cannot understand, such definitions of the
+aims of art are bandied, as mean, if they mean anything, that art finds
+its most perfect expression in pink lollipops and gilt boxes. But in
+the end the truth prevails, if it be well set forth; and the schoolmen,
+groaning in their infinite labour, wearily write another prescription,
+admit another precedent, and make another pigeon-hole.</p>
+
+<p>I have been asked, in print, if I think that there is no phase of life
+which the artist may not touch. Most certainly I think this. More, I
+know it. It is the artist's privilege to seek his material where he
+pleases, and it is no man's privilege to say him nay. If the community
+have left horrible places and horrible lives before his eyes, then the
+fault is the community's; and to picture these places and these lives
+becomes not merely his privilege, but his duty. It was my fate to
+encounter a place in Shoreditch, where children were born and reared in
+circumstances which gave them no reasonable chance of living decent
+lives: where they were born fore-damned to a criminal or semi-criminal
+career. It was my experience to learn the ways of this place, to know
+its inhabitants, to talk with them, eat, drink, and work with them. For
+the existence of this place, and for the evils it engendered, the
+community was, and is, responsible; so that every member of the
+community was, and is, responsible in his degree. If I had been a rich
+man I might have attempted to discharge my peculiar responsibility in
+one way; if I had been a statesman I might have tried another. Being
+neither of these things, but a mere writer of fiction, I sought to do my
+duty by writing a tale wherein I hoped to bring the conditions of this
+place within the apprehension of others. There are those who say that I
+should have turned away my eyes and passed by on the other side: on the
+very respectable precedent of the priest and the Levite in the parable.</p>
+
+<p>Now, when the tale was written and published it was found, as I have
+said, to cause discomfort to some persons. It is needless to say more of
+the schoolmen. Needless, too, to say much of the merely genteel: who
+were shocked to read of low creatures, as Kiddo Cook and Pigeony Poll,
+and to find my pages nowhere illuminated by a marquis. Of such are they
+who delight to read of two men in velvet and feathers perforating each
+other's stomachs with swords; while Josh Perrott and Billy Leary,
+punching each other's heads, present a scene too sickening and brutal to
+consider without disgust. And it was in defiance of the maunderings of
+such as these that Charles Lamb wrote much of his essay <i>On the Genius
+and Character of Hogarth</i>. But chiefly this book of mine disturbed those
+who had done nothing, and preferred to do nothing, by way of discharging
+their responsibility toward the Jago and the people in it. The
+consciousness of duty neglected is discomforting, and personal comfort
+is the god of their kind. They firmly believe it to be the sole function
+of art to minister to their personal comfort&mdash;as upholstery does. They
+find it comfortable to shirk consideration of the fate of the Jago
+children, to shut their eyes to it, to say that all is well and the
+whole world virtuous and happy. And this mental attitude they nickname
+optimism, and vaunt it&mdash;exult in it as a quality. So that they cry out
+at the suggestion that it is no more than a selfish vice; and finding
+truth where they had looked for the materials of another debauch of
+self-delusion, they moan aloud: they protest, and they demand as their
+sacred right that the bitter cup be taken from before them. They have
+moaned and protested at <i>A Child of the Jago</i>, and, craven and
+bewildered, any protest seemed good enough to them. And herein they have
+not wanted for allies among them that sit in committee-rooms, and
+tinker. For your professed philanthropist, following his own spirit, and
+seeing nothing, honestly resents the demonstration that his tinkering
+profits little. There is a story current in the East End of London, of a
+distracted lady who, being assailed with a request for the loan of a
+saucepan, defended herself in these words:&mdash;'Tell yer mother I can't
+lend 'er the saucepan, consekince o' 'avin' lent it to Mrs Brown,
+besides which I'm a-usin' of it meself, an' moreover it's gone to be
+mended, an' what's more I ain't got one.' In a like spirit of lavish
+objection it has been proclaimed in a breath that I transgress:&mdash;because
+(1) I should not have written of the Jago in all the nakedness of truth;
+(2) my description is not in the least like; (3) moreover, it is
+exaggerated; (4) though it may be true, it is quite unnecessary, because
+the Jago was already quite familiar, and everybody knew all about it;
+(5) the Jago houses have been pulled down; and (6) there never was any
+such place as the Jago at all.</p>
+
+<p>To objections thus handsomely variegated it is not easy to reply with
+the tripping brevity wherewith they may be stated; and truly it is
+little reply that they call for, except, perhaps, in so far as they may
+be taken to impugn the sincerity of my work and the accuracy of my
+picture. A few of the objectors have caught up enough of their wits to
+strive after a war in my own country. They take hold of my technical
+method, and accuse me of lack of 'sympathy'; they claim that if I write
+of the Jago I should do so 'even weeping.' Now, my technical method is
+my own, and is deliberately designed to achieve a certain result, as is
+the method of every man&mdash;painter, poet, sculptor, or novelist&mdash;who is
+not the slave and the plaything of his material. My tale is the tale of
+my characters, and I have learned better than to thrust myself and my
+emotions between them and my reader. The cant of the charge stares all
+too plainly from the face of it. It is not that these good people wish
+me to write 'even weeping': for how do they know whether I weep or not?
+No: their wish is, not that I shall weep, but that I shall weep
+obscenely in the public gaze. In other words, that I shall do their
+weeping for them, as a sort of emotional bedesman: that I shall make
+public parade of sympathy in their behalf, so that they may keep their
+own sympathy for themselves, and win comfort from the belief that they
+are eased of their just responsibility by vicarious snivelling.</p>
+
+<p>But the protest, that my picture of the Jago is untrue, is another
+thing. For the most part it has found very vague expression, but there
+are instances of rash excursion into definiteness. Certain passages have
+been denoted as exaggerations&mdash;as impossibilities. Now, I must confess
+that, foreseeing such adventurous indiscretions, I had, for my own
+diversion, set <i>A Child of the Jago</i> with traps. For certain years I
+have lived in the East End of London, and have been, not an occasional
+visitor, but a familiar and equal friend in the house of the East-Ender
+in all his degrees; for, though the steps between be smaller, there are
+more social degrees in the East End than ever in the West. In this
+experience I have seen and I have heard things that persons sitting in
+committee-rooms would call diabolical fable; nevertheless, I have seen
+them, and heard them. But it was none of my design to write of extreme
+instances: typical facts were all I wanted; these, I knew, would be
+met&mdash;or shirked&mdash;with incredulity; so that, whenever I saw reason to
+anticipate a charge of exaggeration&mdash;as for instance, in the matter of
+faction fighting&mdash;I made my typical incident the cold transcript of a
+simple fact, an ordinary, easy-going fact, a fact notorious in the
+neighbourhood, and capable of any amount of reasonable proof. If I
+touched my fact at all, it was to subdue it; that and no more. The traps
+worked well. Not one definite charge of exaggeration has been flung but
+it has been aimed at one of the normal facts I had provided as a target:
+not one. Sometimes the effect has had a humour of its own; as when a
+critic in a literary journal, beginning by selecting two of my norms as
+instances of 'palpable exaggeration,' went on to assure me that there
+was no need to describe such life as the life in the Jago, because it
+was already perfectly familiar to everybody.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily I need not vindicate my accuracy. That has been done for me
+publicly by independent and altogether indisputable authority. In
+particular, the devoted vicar of the parish, which I have called the
+Jago, has testified quite unreservedly to the truth of my presentation.
+Others also, with special knowledge, have done the same; and though I
+refer to them, and am grateful for their support, it is with no
+prejudice to the validity of my own authority. For not only have I lived
+in the East End of London (which one may do, and yet never see it) but
+observation is my trade.</p>
+
+<p>I have remarked in more than one place the expression of a foolish fancy
+that because the houses of the Old Jago have been pulled down, the Jago
+difficulty has been cleared out of the way. That is far from being the
+case. The Jago, as mere bricks and mortar, is gone. But the Jago in
+flesh and blood still lives, and is crowding into neighbourhoods already
+densely over-populated.</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion: the plan and the intention of my story made it requisite
+that, in telling it, I should largely adhere to fact; and I did so. If I
+write other tales different in scope and design, I shall adhere to fact
+or neglect it as may seem good to me: regardless of anybody's
+classification as a realist, or as anything else. For though I have made
+a suggestion, right or wrong, as to what a realist may be, whether I am
+one or not is no concern of mine; but the concern (if it be anybody's)
+of the tabulators and the watersifters.</p>
+
+<p class="right">A. M.</p>
+
+<p><i>February 1897.</i></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class="figcenter">
+<img src="images/map.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A CHILD OF THE JAGO</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was past the mid of a summer night in the Old Jago. The narrow street
+was all the blacker for the lurid sky; for there was a fire in a farther
+part of Shoreditch, and the welkin was an infernal coppery glare. Below,
+the hot, heavy air lay, a rank oppression, on the contorted forms of
+those who made for sleep on the pavement: and in it, and through it all,
+there rose from the foul earth and the grimed walls a close, mingled
+stink&mdash;the odour of the Jago.</p>
+
+<p>From where, off Shoreditch High Street, a narrow passage, set across
+with posts, gave menacing entrance on one end of Old Jago Street, to
+where the other end lost itself in the black beyond Jago Row; from
+where Jago Row began south at Meakin Street, to where it ended north at
+Honey Lane&mdash;there the Jago, for one hundred years the blackest pit in
+London, lay and festered; and half-way along Old Jago Street a narrow
+archway gave upon Jago Court, the blackest hole in all that pit.</p>
+
+<p>A square of two hundred and fifty yards or less&mdash;that was all there was
+of the Jago. But in that square the human population swarmed in
+thousands. Old Jago Street, New Jago Street, Half Jago Street lay
+parallel, east and west: Jago Row at one end and Edge Lane at the other
+lay parallel also, stretching north and south: foul ways all. What was
+too vile for Kate Street, Seven Dials, and Ratcliff Highway in its worst
+day, what was too useless, incapable and corrupt&mdash;all that teemed in the
+Old Jago.</p>
+
+<p>Old Jago Street lay black and close under the quivering red sky; and
+slinking forms, as of great rats, followed one another quickly between
+the posts in the gut by the High Street, and scattered over the Jago.
+For the crowd about the fire was now small, the police was there in
+force, and every safe pocket had been tried. Soon the incursion ceased,
+and the sky, flickering and brightening no longer, settled to a sullen
+flush. On the pavement some writhed wearily, longing for sleep; others,
+despairing of it, sat and lolled, and a few talked. They were not there
+for lack of shelter, but because in this weather repose was less
+unlikely in the street than within doors: and the lodgings of the few
+who nevertheless abode at home were marked here and there by the lights
+visible from the windows. For in this place none ever slept without a
+light, because of three kinds of vermin that light in some sort keeps at
+bay: vermin which added to existence here a terror not to be guessed by
+the unafflicted: who object to being told of it. For on them that lay
+writhen and gasping on the pavement; on them that sat among them; on
+them that rolled and blasphemed in the lighted rooms; on every moving
+creature in this, the Old Jago, day and night, sleeping and walking, the
+third plague of Egypt, and more, lay unceasing.</p>
+
+<p>The stifling air took a further oppression from the red sky. By the
+dark entrance to Jago Court a man rose, flinging out an oath, and sat
+with his head bowed in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah&mdash;h&mdash;h&mdash;h,' he said. 'I wish I was dead: an' kep' a cawfy shop.' He
+looked aside from his hands at his neighbours; but Kiddo Cook's ideal of
+heaven was no new thing, and the sole answer was a snort from a dozing
+man a yard away.</p>
+
+<p>Kiddo Cook felt in his pocket and produced a pipe and a screw of paper.
+'This is a bleed'n' unsocial sort o' evenin' party, this is,' he said,
+'An' 'ere's the on'y real toff in the mob with ardly 'arf a pipeful
+left, an' no lights. D' y' 'ear, me lord'&mdash;leaning toward the dozing
+neighbour&mdash;'got a match?'</p>
+
+<p>'Go t' 'ell!'</p>
+
+<p>'O wot 'orrid langwidge! It's shocking, blimy. Arter that y' ought to
+find me a match. Come on.'</p>
+
+<p>'Go t' 'ell!'</p>
+
+<p>A lank, elderly man, who sat with his back to the wall, pushed up a
+battered tall hat from his eyes, and, producing a box of matches,
+exclaimed 'Hell? And how far's that? You're in it!' He flung abroad a
+bony hand, and glanced upward. Over his forehead a greasy black curl
+dangled and shook as he shuddered back against the wall. 'My God, there
+can be no hell after this!'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah,' Kiddo Cook remarked, as he lit his pipe in the hollow of his
+hands, 'that's a comfort, Mr Beveridge, any'ow.' He returned the
+matches, and the old man, tilting his hat forward, was silent.</p>
+
+<p>A woman, gripping a shawl about her shoulders, came furtively along from
+the posts, with a man walking in her tracks&mdash;a little unsteadily. He was
+not of the Jago, but a decent young workman, by his dress. The sight
+took Kiddo Cook's idle eye, and when the couple had passed, he said
+meditatively: 'There's Billy Leary in luck ag'in: 'is missis do pick 'em
+up, s'elp me. I'd carry the cosh meself if I'd got a woman like 'er.'</p>
+
+<p>Cosh-carrying was near to being the major industry of the Jago. The cosh
+was a foot length of iron rod, with a knob at one end, and a hook (or a
+ring) at the other. The craftsman, carrying it in his coat sleeve,
+waited about dark staircase corners till his wife (married or not)
+brought in a well drunken stranger: when, with a sudden blow behind the
+head, the stranger was happily coshed, and whatever was found on him as
+he lay insensible was the profit on the transaction. In the hands of
+capable practitioners this industry yielded a comfortable subsistence
+for no great exertion. Most, of course, depended on the woman: whose
+duty it was to keep the other artist going in subjects. There were
+legends of surprising ingatherings achieved by wives of especial
+diligence: one of a woman who had brought to the cosh some
+six-and-twenty on a night of public rejoicing. This was, however, a
+story years old, and may have been no more than an exemplary fiction,
+designed, like a Sunday School book, to convey a counsel of perfection
+to the dutiful matrons of the Old Jago.</p>
+
+<p>The man and woman vanished in a doorway near the Jago Row end, where,
+for some reason, dossers were fewer than about the portal of Jago Court.
+There conversation flagged, and a broken snore was heard. It was a
+quiet night, as quietness was counted in the Jago; for it was too hot
+for most to fight in that stifling air&mdash;too hot to do more than turn on
+the stones and swear. Still the last hoarse yelps of a combat of women
+came intermittently from Half Jago Street in the further confines.</p>
+
+<p>In a little while something large and dark was pushed forth from the
+door-opening near Jago Row which Billy Leary's spouse had entered. The
+thing rolled over, and lay tumbled on the pavement, for a time unnoted.
+It might have been yet another would-be sleeper, but for its stillness.
+Just such a thing it seemed, belike, to two that lifted their heads and
+peered from a few yards off, till they rose on hands and knees and crept
+to where it lay: Jago rats both. A man it was; with a thick smear across
+his face, and about his head the source of the dark trickle that sought
+the gutter deviously over the broken flags. The drab stuff of his
+pockets peeped out here and there in a crumpled bunch, and his waistcoat
+gaped where the watch-guard had been. Clearly, here was an uncommonly
+remunerative cosh&mdash;a cosh so good that the boots had been neglected,
+and remained on the man's feet. These the kneeling two unlaced deftly,
+and, rising, prize in hand, vanished in the deeper shadow of Jago Row.</p>
+
+<p>A small boy, whom they met full tilt at the corner, staggered out to the
+gutter and flung a veteran curse after them. He was a slight child, by
+whose size you might have judged his age at five. But his face was of
+serious and troubled age. One who knew the children of the Jago, and
+could tell, might have held him eight, or from that to nine.</p>
+
+<p>He replaced his hands in his trousers pockets, and trudged up the
+street. As he brushed by the coshed man he glanced again toward Jago
+Row, and, jerking his thumb that way, 'Done 'im for 'is boots,' he
+piped. But nobody marked him till he reached Jago Court, when old
+Beveridge, pushing back his hat once more, called sweetly and silkily,
+'Dicky Perrott!' and beckoned with his finger.</p>
+
+<p>The boy approached, and as he did so the man's skeleton
+hand suddenly shot out and gripped him by the collar.
+'It&mdash;never&mdash;does&mdash;to&mdash;see&mdash;too&mdash;much!' Beveridge said, in a series of
+shouts, close to the boy's ear. 'Now go home,' he added, in a more
+ordinary tone, with a push to make his meaning plain: and straightway
+relapsed against the wall.</p>
+
+<p>The boy scowled and backed off the pavement. His ragged jacket was
+coarsely made from one much larger, and he hitched the collar over his
+shoulder as he shrank toward a doorway some few yards on. Front doors
+were used merely as firewood in the Old Jago, and most had been burnt
+there many years ago. If perchance one could have been found still on
+its hinges, it stood ever open and probably would not shut. Thus at
+night the Jago doorways were a row of black holes, foul and forbidding.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky Perrott entered his hole with caution, for anywhere, in the
+passage and on the stairs, somebody might be lying drunk, against whom
+it would be unsafe to stumble. He found nobody, however, and climbed and
+reckoned his way up the first stair-flight with the necessary regard
+for the treads that one might step through and the rails that had gone
+from the side. Then he pushed open the door of the first-floor back and
+was at home.</p>
+
+<p>A little heap of guttering grease, not long ago a candle end, stood and
+spread on the mantel-piece, and gave irregular light from its drooping
+wick. A thin-railed iron bedstead, bent and staggering, stood against a
+wall, and on its murky coverings a half-dressed woman sat and neglected
+a baby that lay by her, grieving and wheezing. The woman had a long
+dolorous face, empty of expression and weak of mouth.</p>
+
+<p>'Where 'a' you bin, Dicky?' she asked, rather complaining than asking.
+'It's sich low hours for a boy.'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky glanced about the room. 'Got anythink to eat?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'I dunno,' she answered listlessly. 'P'raps there's a bit o' bread in
+the cupboard. I don't want nothin', it's so 'ot. An' father ain't bin
+'ome since tea-time.'</p>
+
+<p>The boy rummaged and found a crust. Gnawing at this, he crossed to
+where the baby lay. ''Ullo, Looey,' he said, bending and patting the
+muddy cheek. ''Ullo!'</p>
+
+<p>The baby turned feebly on its back, and set up a thin wail. Its eyes
+were large and bright, its tiny face was piteously flea-bitten and
+strangely old. 'Wy, she's 'ungry, mother,' said Dicky Perrott, and took
+the little thing up.</p>
+
+<p>He sat on a small box, and rocked the baby on his knees, feeding it with
+morsels of chewed bread. The mother, dolefully inert, looked on and
+said: 'She's that backward I'm quite wore out; more 'n ten months old,
+an' don't even crawl yut. It's a never-endin' trouble, is children.'</p>
+
+<p>She sighed, and presently stretched herself on the bed. The boy rose,
+and carrying his little sister with care, for she was dozing, essayed to
+look through the grimy window. The dull flush still spread overhead, but
+Jago Court lay darkling below, with scarce a sign of the ruinous back
+yards that edged it on this and the opposite sides, and nothing but
+blackness between.</p>
+
+<p>The boy returned to his box, and sat. Then he said: 'I don't s'pose
+father's 'avin' a sleep outside, eh?'</p>
+
+<p>The woman sat up with some show of energy. 'Wot?' she said sharply.
+'Sleep out in the street like them low Ranns an' Learys? I should 'ope
+not. It's bad enough livin' 'ere at all, an' me being used to different
+things once, an' all. You ain't seen 'im outside, 'ave ye?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I ain't seen 'im: I jist looked in the court.' Then, after a pause:
+'I 'ope 'e's done a click,' the boy said.</p>
+
+<p>His mother winced. 'I dunno wot you mean, Dicky,' she said, but
+falteringly. 'You&mdash;you're gittin' that low an' an'&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Wy, copped somethink, o' course. Nicked somethink. You know.'</p>
+
+<p>'If you say sich things as that I'll tell 'im wot you say, an' 'e'll pay
+you. We ain't that sort o' people, Dicky, you ought to know. I was alwis
+kep' respectable an' straight all my life, I'm sure, an'&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'I know. You said so before, to father&mdash;I 'eard: w'en 'e brought 'ome
+that there yuller prop&mdash;the necktie pin. Wy, where did 'e git that? 'E
+ain't 'ad a job for munse and munse: where's the yannups come from wot's
+bin for to pay the rent, an' git the toke, an' milk for Looey? Think I
+dunno? I ain't a kid. I know.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dicky, Dicky! you mustn't say sich things!' was all the mother could
+find to say, with tears in her slack eyes. 'It's wicked an'&mdash;an' low.
+An' you must alwis be respectable an' straight, Dicky, an'
+you'll&mdash;you'll git on then.'</p>
+
+<p>'Straight people's fools, <i>I</i> reckon. Kiddo Cook says that, an' 'e's as
+wide as Broad Street. W'en I grow up I'm goin' to git toffs' clo'es an'
+be in the 'igh mob. They does big clicks.'</p>
+
+<p>'They git put in a dark prison for years an' years, Dicky&mdash;an'&mdash;an' if
+you're sich a wicked low boy, father 'll give you the strap&mdash;'ard,' the
+mother returned, with what earnestness she might. 'Gimme the baby, an'
+you go to bed, go on; 'fore father comes.'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky handed over the baby, whose wizen face was now relaxed in sleep,
+and slowly disencumbered himself of the ungainly jacket, staring at the
+wall in a brown study. 'It's the mugs wot git took,' he said, absently.
+'An' quoddin' ain't so bad.' Then, after a pause, he turned and added
+suddenly: 'S'pose father'll be smugged some day, eh, mother?'</p>
+
+<p>His mother made no reply, but bent languidly over the baby, with an
+indefinite pretence of settling it in a place on the bed. Soon Dicky
+himself, in the short and ragged shirt he had worn under the jacket,
+burrowed head first among the dingy coverings at the foot, and
+protruding his head at the further side, took his accustomed place
+crosswise at the extreme end.</p>
+
+<p>The filthy ceiling lit and darkened by fits as the candle-wick fell and
+guttered to its end. He heard his mother rise and find another fragment
+of candle to light by its expiring flame, but he lay still wakeful.
+After a time he asked: 'Mother, why don't you come to bed?'</p>
+
+<p>'Waitin' for father. Go to sleep.'</p>
+
+<p>He was silent for a little. But brain and eyes were wide awake, and soon
+he spoke again. 'Them noo 'uns in the front room,' he said. 'Ain't the
+man give 'is wife a 'idin' yut?'</p>
+
+<p>'No.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nor yut the boy&mdash;'umpty-backed 'un?'</p>
+
+<p>'No.'</p>
+
+<p>'Seems they're mighty pertickler. Fancy theirselves too good for their
+neighbours; I 'eard Pigeony Poll say that; on'y Poll said&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'You mustn't never listen to Pigeony Poll, Dicky. Ain't you 'eard me say
+so? Go to sleep. 'Ere comes father.' There was, indeed, a step on the
+stairs, but it passed the landing, and went on to the top floor. Dicky
+lay awake, but silent, gazing upward and back through the dirty window
+just over his head. It was very hot, and he fidgeted uncomfortably,
+fearing to turn or toss lest the baby should wake and cry. There came a
+change in the hue of the sky, and he watched the patch within his view,
+until the red seemed to gather in spots, and fade a spot at a time. Then
+at last there was a tread on the stairs, that stayed at the door; and
+father had come home. Dicky lay still, and listened.</p>
+
+<p>'Lor, Josh, where ye bin?' Dicky heard his mother say. 'I'm almost wore
+out a-waitin'.'</p>
+
+<p>'Awright, awright'&mdash;this in a hoarse grunt, little above a whisper. 'Got
+any water up 'ere? Wash this 'ere stick.'</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause, wherein Dicky knew his mother looked about her in
+vacant doubt as to whether or not water was in the room. Then a quick,
+undertoned scream, and the stick rattled heavily on the floor. 'It's
+sticky!' his mother said. 'O my Gawd, Josh, look at that&mdash;an' bits o'
+'air, too!' The great shadow of an open hand shot up across the ceiling
+and fell again. 'O Josh! O my Gawd! You ain't, 'ave ye? Not&mdash;not&mdash;not
+that?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not wot? Gawblimy, not what? Shutcher mouth. If a man fights, you're
+got to fight back, ain' cher? Any one 'ud think it was a murder, to look
+at ye. I ain't sich a damn fool as that. 'Ere&mdash;pull up that board.'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky knew the loose floor-board that was lifted with a slight groaning
+jar. It was to the right of the hearth, and he had shammed sleep when it
+had been lifted once before. His mother whimpered and cried quietly.
+'You'll git in trouble, Josh,' she said. 'I wish you'd git a reg'lar
+job, Josh, like what you used&mdash;I do&mdash;I do.'</p>
+
+<p>The board was shut down again. Dicky Perrott through one opened eye saw
+the sky a pale grey above, and hoped the click had been a good one:
+hoped also that it might bring bullock's liver for dinner.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Out in the Jago the pale dawn brought a cooler air and the chance of
+sleep. From the paving of Old Jago Street sad grey faces, open-mouthed,
+looked upward as from the Valley of Dry Bones. Down by Jago Row the
+coshed subject, with the blood dry on his face, felt the colder air, and
+moved a leg.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+
+<p>Three-quarters of a mile east of the Jago's outermost limit was the East
+End Elevation Mission and Pansophical Institute: such was the amazing
+success whereof, that a new wing had been built, and was now to be
+declared open by a Bishop of great eminence and industry.</p>
+
+<p>The triumphs of the East End Elevation Mission and Pansophical Institute
+were known and appreciated far from East London, by people who knew less
+of that part than of Asia Minor. Indeed, they were chiefly appreciated
+by these. There were kept, perpetually on tap for the aspiring East
+Ender, the Higher Life, the Greater Thought, and the Wider Humanity:
+with other radiant abstractions, mostly in the comparative degree,
+specifics all for the manufacture of the Superior Person. There were
+many Lectures given on still more subjects. Pictures were borrowed and
+shown, with revelations to the Uninformed of the morals ingeniously
+concealed by the painters. The Uninformed were also encouraged to debate
+and to produce papers on literary and political matters, while still
+unencumbered with the smallest knowledge thereof: for the Enlargement of
+the Understanding and the Embellishment of the Intellect. And there were
+classes, and clubs, and newspapers, and games of draughts, and musical
+evenings, and a brass band, whereby the life of the Hopeless Poor might
+be coloured, and the Misery of the Submerged alleviated. The wretches
+who crowded to these benefits were tradesmen's sons, small shop-keepers
+and their families, and neat clerks, with here and there a smart young
+artisan of one of the especially respectable trades. They freely
+patronised the clubs, the musical evenings, the brass band, and the
+bagatelle board; and those who took themselves seriously debated and
+Mutually-Improved with pomp. Others, subject to savage fits of
+wanting-to-know, made short rushes at random evening classes, with
+intervals of disgusted apathy. Altogether, a number of decently-dressed
+and mannerly young men passed many evenings at the Pansophical Institute
+in harmless pleasures, and often with an agreeable illusion of
+intellectual advance.</p>
+
+<p>Other young men, more fortunately circumstanced, with the educational
+varnish fresh and raw upon them, came from afar, equipped with a foreign
+mode of thought and a proper ignorance of the world and the proportions
+of things, as Missionaries. Not without some anxiety to their parents,
+they plunged into the perilous deeps of the East End, to struggle&mdash;for a
+fortnight&mdash;with its suffering and its brutishness. So they went among
+the tradesmen's sons and the shopmen, who endured them as they endured
+the nominal subscription; and they came away with a certain relief, and
+with some misgiving as to what impression they had made, and what they
+had done to make it. But it was with knowledge and authority that they
+went back among those who had doubted their personal safety in the dark
+region. The East End, they reported, was nothing like what it was said
+to be. You could see much worse places up West. The people were quite a
+decent sort, in their way: shocking Bounders, of course; but quite clean
+and quiet, and very comfortably dressed, with ties and collars and
+watches.</p>
+
+<p>But the Missionaries were few, and the subscribers to the Elevation
+Mission were many. Most had been convinced, by what they had been told,
+by what they had read in charity appeals, and perhaps by what they had
+seen in police-court and inquest reports, that the whole East End was a
+wilderness of slums: slums packed with starving human organisms without
+minds and without morals, preying on each other alive. These subscribers
+visited the Institute by twos and threes, on occasions of particular
+festivity among the neat clerks, and were astonished at the wonderful
+effects of Pansophic Elevation on the degraded classes, their aspect and
+their habits. Perhaps it was a concert where nobody was drunk: perhaps a
+little dance where nobody howled a chorus, nor wore his hat, nor punched
+his partner in the eye. It was a great marvel, whereunto the observers
+testified: so that more subscriptions came, and the new wing was built.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon was bright, and all was promising. A small crowd of idlers
+hung about the main door of the Institute, and stared at a string of
+flags. Away to the left stood the new wing, a face of fair, clean brick;
+the ornamentation, of approved earnestness, in terra-cotta squares at
+regular intervals. Within sat many friends and relations of the shopmen
+and superior mechanics, and waited for the Bishop; the Eminences of the
+Elevation Mission sitting apart on the platform. Without, among the
+idlers, waited Dicky Perrott. His notions of what were going on were
+indistinct, but he had a belief, imbibed through rumour and tradition,
+that all celebrations at such large buildings were accompanied by the
+consumption, in the innermost recesses, of cake and tea. Even to be near
+cake was something. In Shoreditch High Street was a shop where cake
+stood in the window in great slabs, one slab over another, to an
+incalculable value. At this window&mdash;against it, as near as possible,
+his face flattened white&mdash;Dicky would stand till the shop-keeper drove
+him off: till he had but to shut his eyes to see once more, in the
+shifting black, the rich yellow sections with their myriad raisins. Once
+a careless errand-boy, who had bought a slice, took so clumsy a bite as
+he emerged that near a third of the whole piece broke and fell; and this
+Dicky had snatched from the paving and bolted with, ere the owner quite
+saw his loss. This was a superior sort of cake, at a penny. But once he
+had managed to buy himself a slice of an inferior sort for a halfpenny,
+in Meakin Street.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky Perrott, these blessed memories in his brain, stood unobtrusively
+near the door, with the big jacket buttoned over as decently as might
+be, full of a desperate design: which was to get inside by whatsoever
+manner of trick or opportunity he might, and so, if it were humanly
+possible, to the cake.</p>
+
+<p>The tickets were being taken at the door by an ardent young
+Elevator&mdash;one of the missionaries. Him, and all such washed and
+well-dressed people, Dicky had learnt to hold in serene contempt when
+the business in hand was dodging. There was no hurry: the Elevator might
+waste his vigilance on the ticket-holders for some time yet. And Dicky
+knew better than to betray the smallest sign of a desire for entrance
+while his enemy's attention was awake.</p>
+
+<p>Carriages drew up, and yielded more Eminences: toward the end the Bishop
+himself, whom Dicky observed but as a pleasant-looking old gentleman in
+uncommon clothes; and on whom he bestowed no more thought than a passing
+wonder at what might be the accident to his hat which had necessitated
+its repair with string.</p>
+
+<p>But at the spikes of the Bishop's carriage came another; and out of that
+there got three ladies, friends of the ticket-receiver, on whom they
+closed, greeting and shaking hands; and in a flash Dicky Perrott was
+beyond the lobby and moving obscurely along the walls of the inner hall,
+behind pillars and in shadow, seeking cake.</p>
+
+<p>The Choral Society sang their lustiest, and there were speeches.
+Eminences expressed their surprise and delight at finding the people of
+the East End, gathered in the Institute building, so respectable and
+clean, thanks to persistent, indefatigable, unselfish Elevation.</p>
+
+<p>The good Bishop, amid clapping of hands and fluttering of handkerchiefs,
+piped cherubically of everything. He rejoiced to see that day, whereon
+the helping hand of the West was so unmistakably made apparent in the
+East. He rejoiced also to find himself in the midst of so admirably
+typical an assemblage&mdash;so representative, if he might say so, of that
+great East End of London, thirsting and crying out for&mdash;for Elevation:
+for that&mdash;ah&mdash;Elevation which the more fortunately circumstanced
+denizens of&mdash;of other places, had so munificently&mdash;laid on. The people
+of the East End had been sadly misrepresented&mdash;in popular periodicals
+and in&mdash;in other ways. The East End, he was convinced, was not so black
+as it was painted. (Applause.) He had but to look about him. <i>Etcetera,
+etcetera.</i> He questioned whether so well-conducted, morally-given, and
+respectable a gathering could be brought together in any West End parish
+with which he was acquainted. It was his most pleasant duty on this
+occasion&mdash;and so on and so forth.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky Perrott had found the cake. It was in a much smaller room at the
+back of the hall, wherein it was expected that the Bishop and certain
+Eminences of the platform would refresh themselves with tea after the
+ceremony. There were heavy, drooping curtains at the door of this room,
+and deep from the largest folds the ratling from the Jago watched. The
+table was guarded by a sour-faced man&mdash;just such a man as drove him from
+the window of the cake shop in Shoreditch High Street. Nobody else was
+there yet, and plainly the sour-faced man must be absent or busy ere the
+cake could be got at.</p>
+
+<p>There was a burst of applause in the hall: the new wing had been
+declared open. Then there was more singing, and after that much
+shuffling and tramping, for everybody was free to survey the new rooms
+on the way out; and the Importances from the platform came to find the
+tea.</p>
+
+<p>Filling the room and standing about in little groups; chatting,
+munching, and sipping, while the sour-faced man distractedly floundered
+amid crockery: not a soul of them all perceived an inconsiderable small
+boy, ducking and dodging vaguely among legs and round skirts, making,
+from time to time, a silent snatch at a plate on the table: and
+presently he vanished altogether. Then the amiable Bishop, beaming over
+the tea-cup six inches from his chin, at two courtiers of the clergy,
+bethought him of a dinner engagement, and passed his hand downward over
+the rotundity of his waistcoat.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear, dear,' said the Bishop, glancing down suddenly, 'why&mdash;what's
+become of my watch?'</p>
+
+<p>There hung three inches of black ribbon, with a cut end. The Bishop
+looked blankly at the Elevators about him.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Three streets off, Dicky Perrott, with his shut fist deep in his
+breeches pocket, and a gold watch in the fist, ran full drive for the
+Old Jago.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+
+<p>There was nobody in chase; but Dicky Perrott, excited by his novel
+exploit, ran hard: forgetting the lesson first learnt by every child of
+the Jago, to avoid, as far as may be, suspicious flight in open streets.
+He burst into the Old Jago from the Jago Row corner, by Meakin Street;
+and still he ran. A small boy a trifle bigger than himself made a sharp
+punch at him as he passed, but he took no heed. The hulking group at the
+corner of Old Jago Street, ever observant of weaklings with plunder, saw
+him, and one tried to catch his arm, but he had the wit to dodge. Past
+the Jago Court passage he scudded, in at the familiar doorway, and up
+the stairs. A pale hunchbacked child, clean and wistful, descended, and
+him Dicky flung aside and half downstairs with 'Git out, 'ump!'</p>
+
+<p>Josh Perrott sat on the bed, eating fried fish from an oily paper; for
+it was tea-time. He was a man of thirty-two, of middle height and
+stoutly built, with a hard, leathery face as of one much older. The hair
+about his mouth seemed always three days old&mdash;never much less nor much
+more. He was a plasterer&mdash;had, at least, so described himself at
+police-courts. But it was long since he had plastered, though he still
+walked abroad splashed and speckled, as though from an eruption of
+inherent plaster. In moments of pride he declared himself the only
+member of his family who had ever learned a trade, and worked at it. It
+was a long relinquished habit, but while it lasted he had married a
+decent boiler-maker's daughter, who had known nothing of the Jago till
+these latter days. One other boast Josh Perrott had: that nothing but
+shot or pointed steel could hurt him. And this, too, was near being a
+true boast; as he had proved in more than one fight in the local
+arena&mdash;which was Jago Court. Now he sat peaceably on the edge of the
+bed, and plucked with his fingers at the oily fish, while his wife
+grubbed hopelessly about the cupboard shelves for the screw of paper
+which was the sugar-basin.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky entered at a burst. 'Mother&mdash;father&mdash;look! I done a click! I got a
+clock&mdash;a red 'un!'</p>
+
+<p>Josh Perrott stopped, jaw and hand, with a pinch of fish poised in air.
+The woman turned, and her chin fell. 'O, Dicky, Dicky,' she cried, in
+real distress, 'you're a awful low, wicked boy. My Gawd, Josh, 'e&mdash;'e'll
+grow up bad: I said so.'</p>
+
+<p>Josh Perrott bolted the pinch of fish, and sucked his fingers as he
+sprang to the door. After a quick glance down the stairs he shut it, and
+turned to Dicky. 'Where d'je get that, ye young devel?' he asked, and
+snatched the watch.</p>
+
+<p>'Claimed it auf a ol' bloke w'en 'e was drinkin' 'is tea,' Dicky
+replied, with sparkling eyes. 'Let's 'ave a look at it, father.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did 'e run after ye?'</p>
+
+<p>'No&mdash;didn't know nuffin' about it. I cut 'is bit o' ribbin with my
+knife.' Dicky held up a treasured relic of blade and handle, found in a
+gutter. 'Ain' cher goin' to let's 'ave a look at it?'</p>
+
+<p>Josh Perrott looked doubtfully toward his wife: the children were
+chiefly her concern. Of her sentiments there could be no mistake. He
+slipped the watch into his own pocket, and caught Dicky by the collar.</p>
+
+<p>'I'll give you somethink, you dam young thief,' he exclaimed, slipping
+off his belt. 'You'd like to have us all in stir for a year or two, I
+s'pose; goin' thievin' watches like a growed-up man.' And he plied the
+belt savagely, while Dicky, amazed, breathless and choking, spun about
+him with piteous squeals, and the baby woke and puled in feeble
+sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>There was a rip, and the collar began to leave the old jacket. Feeling
+this, Josh Perrott released it, and with a quick drive of the fist in
+the neck sent Dicky staggering across the room. Dicky caught at the bed
+frame, and limped out to the landing, sobbing grievously in the bend of
+his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>It was more than his mother had intended, but she knew better than to
+attempt interference. Now that he was gone, she said, with some
+hesitation: ''Adn't you better take it out at once, Josh?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yus, I'm goin',' Josh replied, turning the watch in his hand. 'It's a
+good 'un&mdash;a topper.'</p>
+
+<p>'You&mdash;you won't let Weech 'ave it, will ye, Josh? 'E&mdash;'e never gives
+much.'</p>
+
+<p>'No bloomin' fear. I'm goin' up 'Oxton with this 'ere.'</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Dicky sobbed his way down the stairs and through the passage to the
+back. In the yard he looked for Tommy Rann, to sympathise. But Tommy was
+not, and Dicky paused in his grief to reflect that perhaps, indeed, in
+the light of calm reason, he would rather cast the story of the watch in
+a more heroic mould, for Tommy's benefit, than was compatible with tears
+and a belted back. So he turned and squeezed through a hole in the
+broken fence, sobbing again, in search of the friend that shared his
+inmost sorrows.</p>
+
+<p>The belting was bad&mdash;very bad. There was broken skin on his shins where
+the strap had curled round, and there was a little sticky blood under
+the shirt half way up his back: to say nothing of bruises. But it was
+the hopeless injustice of things that shook him to the soul. Wholly
+unaided, he had done, with neatness and credit, a click that anybody in
+the Jago would have been proud of. Overjoyed, he had hastened to receive
+the commendations of his father and mother, and to place the prize in
+their hands, freely and generously, though perhaps with some hope of hot
+supper by way of celebration. And his reward was this. Why? He could
+understand nothing: could but feel the wrong that broke his heart. And
+so, sobbing, he crawled through two fences to weep on the shaggy neck of
+Jerry Gullen's canary.</p>
+
+<p>Jerry Gullen's canary was no bird, but a donkey: employed by Jerry
+Gullen in his occasional intervals of sobriety to drag a cranky shallow,
+sometimes stored with glass bottles, rags, and hearth-stone: sometimes
+with firewood manufactured from a convenient hoarding, or from the
+joinery of an empty house: sometimes with empty sacks covering
+miscellaneous property suddenly acquired and not for general inspection.
+His vacations, many and long, Jerry Gullen's canary spent, forgotten and
+unfed, in Jerry Gullen's back-yard: gnawing desperately at fences, and
+harrowing the neighbourhood with his bray. Thus the nickname,
+facetiously applied by Kiddo Cook in celebration of his piteous song,
+grew into use; and 'Canary' would call the creature's attention as
+readily as a mouthful of imprecations.</p>
+
+<p>Jerry Gullen's canary was gnawing, gnawing, with a sound as of a crooked
+centre-bit. Everywhere about the foul yard, ten or twelve feet square,
+wood was rounded and splintered and bitten white, and as the donkey
+turned his heavy head, a drip of blood from his gums made a disc on the
+stones. A twitch of the ears welcomed Dicky, grief-stricken as he was;
+for it was commonly thus that he bethought him of solace in Jerry
+Gullen's back-yard. And so Dicky, his arms about the mangy neck, told
+the tale of his wrongs till consolation came in composition of the
+heroic narrative designed for Tommy Rann.</p>
+
+<p>'O, Canary, it is a blasted shame!'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Dicky Perrott came running into Jago Row with the Bishop's watch in
+his pocket, another boy punched a fist at him, and at the time Dicky was
+at a loss to guess the cause&mdash;unless it were a simple caprice&mdash;but
+stayed neither to inquire nor to retaliate. The fact was that the Ranns
+and the Learys were coming out, fighting was in the air, and the small
+boy, meeting another a trifle smaller, punched on general principles.
+The Ranns and the Learys, ever at war or in guarded armistice, were the
+great rival families&mdash;the Montagues and the Capulets&mdash;of the old Jago.
+The Learys indeed, scarce pretended to rivalry&mdash;rather to factious
+opposition. For the Ranns gloried in the style and title of the 'Royal
+Family,' and dominated the Jago; but there were mighty fighters, men
+and women, among the Learys, and when a combat arose it was a hard one
+and an animated. The two families ramified throughout the Jago; and
+under the Rann standard, whether by kin or by custom, were the Gullens,
+the Fishers, the Spicers, and the Walshes; while in the Leary train came
+Dawsons, Greens, and Harnwells. So that near all the Jago was wont to be
+on one side or the other, and any of the Jago which was not, was apt to
+be the worse for it; for the Ranns drubbed all them that were not of
+their faction in the most thorough and most workmanlike manner, and the
+Learys held by the same practice; so that neutrality meant double
+drubbing. But when the Ranns and Learys combined, and the Old Jago
+issued forth in its entire might against Dove Lane, then the battle was
+one to go miles to see.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, was but a Rann and Leary fight; and it was but in its
+early stages when Dicky Perrott, emerging from Jerry Gullen's back-yard,
+made for Shoreditch High Street by way of the 'Posties'&mdash;the passage
+with posts at the end of Old Jago Street. His purpose was to snatch a
+handful of hay from some passing waggon, or of mixed fodder from some
+unguarded nosebag, wherewith to reward the sympathy of Jerry Gullen's
+canary. But by the 'Posties,' at the Edge Lane corner, Tommy Rann,
+capless, and with a purple bump on his forehead, came flying into his
+arms, breathless, exultant, a babbling braggart. He had fought Johnny
+Leary and Joe Dawson, he said, one after the other, and pretty nigh
+broke Johnny Leary's blasted neck; and Joe's Dawson's big brother was
+after him now with a bleed'n' shovel. So the two children ran on
+together, and sought the seclusion of their own back yard; where the
+story of Johnny Rann's prowess, with scowls and the pounding of
+imaginary foes, and the story of the Bishop's watch, with suppressions
+and improvements, mingled and contended in the thickening dusk. And
+Jerry Gullen's canary went forgotten and unrequited.</p>
+
+<p>That night fighting was sporadic and desultory in the Jago. Bob the
+Bender was reported to have a smashed nose, and Sam Cash had his head
+bandaged at the hospital. At the Bag of Nails in Edge Lane, Snob Spicer
+was knocked out of knowledge with a quart pot, and Cocko Harnwell's
+missis had a piece bitten off of one ear. As the night wore on, taunts
+and defiances were bandied from window to door, and from door to window,
+between those who intended to begin fighting to-morrow; and shouts from
+divers corners gave notice of isolated scuffles. Once a succession of
+piercing screams seemed to betoken that Sally Green had begun. There was
+a note in the screams of Sally Green's opposites which the Jago had
+learned to recognise. Sally Green, though of the weaker faction, was the
+female champion of the Old Jago: an eminence won and kept by fighting
+tactics peculiar to herself. For it was her way, reserving teeth and
+nails, to wrestle closely with her antagonist, throw her by a dexterous
+twist on her face, and fall on her, instantly seizing the victim's nape
+in her teeth, gnawing and worrying. The sufferer's screams were audible
+afar, and beyond their invariable eccentricity of quality&mdash;a quality a
+vaguely suggestive of dire surprise&mdash;they had mechanical persistence, a
+pump-like regularity, that distinguished them, in the accustomed ear,
+from other screams.</p>
+
+<p>Josh Perrott had not been home all the evening: probably the Bishop's
+watch was in course of transmutation into beer. Dicky, stiff and
+domestically inclined, nursed Looey and listened to the noises without
+till he fell asleep, in hopeful anticipation of the morrow. For Tommy
+Rann had promised him half of a broken iron railing wherewith to fight
+the Learys.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+
+<p>Sleep in the Jago was at best a thing of intermission, for
+reasons&mdash;reasons of multitude&mdash;already denoted; nevertheless Dicky slept
+well enough to be unconscious of his father's homecoming. In the
+morning, however, there lay Josh Perrott, snoring thunderously on the
+floor, piebald with road-dust. This was not a morning whereon father
+would want breakfast&mdash;that was plain: he would wake thirsty and savage.
+So Dicky made sure of a crust from the cupboard, and betook himself in
+search of Tommy Rann. As to washing, he was never especially fond of it,
+and in any case there were fifty excellent excuses for neglect. The only
+water was that from the little tap in the back yard. The little tap was
+usually out of order, or had been stolen bodily by a tenant; and if it
+were not, there was no basin there, nor any soap, nor towel; and
+anything savouring of moderate cleanliness was resented in the Jago as
+an assumption of superiority.</p>
+
+<p>Fighting began early, fast and furious. The Ranns got together soon, and
+hunted the Learys up and down, and attacked them in their houses: the
+Learys' chances only coming when straggling Ranns were cut off from the
+main body. The weapons in use, as was customary, rose in effectiveness
+by a swiftly ascending scale. The Learys, assailed with sticks, replied
+with sticks torn from old packing-cases, with protruding nails. The two
+sides bethought them of coshes simultaneously, and such as had no
+coshes&mdash;very few&mdash;had pokers and iron railings. Ginger Stagg, at bay in
+his passage, laid open Pud Palmer's cheek with a chisel; and, knives
+thus happily legitimised with the least possible preliminary form,
+everybody was free to lay hold of whatever came handy.</p>
+
+<p>In Old Jago Street, half way between Jago Court and Edge Lane, stood the
+Feathers, the grimiest and vilest of the four public-houses in the
+Jago. Into the Feathers some dozen Learys were driven, and for a while
+they held the inner bar and the tap-room against the Ranns, who swarmed
+after them, chairs, bottles, and pewter pots flying thick, while Mother
+Gapp, the landlady, hung hysterical on the beer-pulls in the bar,
+supplicating and blubbering aloud. Then a partition came down with a
+crash, bringing shelves and many glasses with it, and the Ranns rushed
+over the ruin, beating the Learys down, jumping on them, heaving them
+through the back windows. Having thus cleared the house of the intruding
+enemy, the Ranns demanded recompense of liquor, and took it, dragging
+handles off beer-engines, seizing bottles, breaking into the cellar, and
+driving in bungs. Nobody better than Mother Gapp could quell an ordinary
+bar riot&mdash;even to knocking a man down with a pot; but she knew better
+than to attempt interference now. Nothing could have made her swoon, but
+she sat limp and helpless, weeping and blaspheming.</p>
+
+<p>The Ranns cleared off, every man with a bottle or so, and scattered, and
+this for a while was their undoing. For the Learys rallied and hunted
+the Ranns in their turn: a crowd of eighty or a hundred sweeping the
+Jago from Honey Lane to Meakin Street. Then they swung back through Edge
+Lane to Old Jago Street, and made for Jerry Gullen's&mdash;a house full of
+Ranns. Jerry Gullen, Bill Rann, and the rest took refuge in the upper
+floors and barricaded the stairs. Below, the Learys broke windows and
+ravaged the rooms, smashing whatsoever of furniture was to be found.
+Above, Pip Walsh, who affected horticulture on his window-sill, hurled
+down flower-pots. On the stairs, Billy Leary, scaling the barricade, was
+flung from top to bottom, and had to be carried home. And then Pip
+Walsh's missis scattered the besiegers on the pavement below with a
+kettleful of boiling water.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sudden sortie of Ranns from Jago Court, but it profited
+nothing; for the party was small, and, its advent being unexpected,
+there was a lack of prompt co-operation from the house. The Learys held
+the field.</p>
+
+<p>Down the middle of Old Jago Street came Sally Green: red faced,
+stripped to the waist, dancing, hoarse and triumphant. Nail-scores wide
+as the finger striped her back, her face, and her throat, and she had a
+black eye; but in one great hand she dangled a long bunch of clotted
+hair, as she whooped defiance to the Jago. It was a trophy newly rent
+from the scalp of Norah Walsh, champion of the Rann womankind, who had
+crawled away to hide her blighted head, and be restored with gin. None
+answered Sally's challenge, and, staying but to fling a brickbat at Pip
+Walsh's window, she carried her dance and her trophy into Edge Lane.</p>
+
+<p>The scrimmage on Jerry Gullen's stairs was thundering anew, and parties
+of Learys were making for other houses in the street, when there came a
+volley of yells from Jago Row, heralding a scudding mob of Ranns. The
+defeated sortie-party from Jago Court, driven back, had gained New Jago
+Street by way of the house-passages behind the Court, and set to
+gathering the scattered faction. Now the Ranns came, drunk, semi-drunk,
+and otherwise, and the Learys, leaving Jerry Gullen's, rushed to meet
+them. There was a great shock, hats flew, sticks and heads made a wooden
+rattle, and instantly the two mobs were broken into an uproarious
+confusion of tangled groups, howling and grappling. Here a man crawled
+into a passage to nurse a broken head; there a knot gathered to kick a
+sprawling foe. So the fight thinned out and spread, resolving into many
+independent combats, with concerted rushes of less and less frequency,
+till once again all through the Jago each fought for his own hand. Kiddo
+Cook, always humorous, ran hilariously through the streets, brandishing
+a long roll of twisted paper, wherewith he smacked the heads of Learys
+all and sundry, who realised too late that the paper was twisted round a
+lodging-house poker.</p>
+
+<p>Now, of the few neutral Jagos: most lay low. Josh Perrott, however, hard
+as nails and respected for it, feared neither Rann nor Leary, and
+leaving a little money with his missis, carried his morning mouth in
+search of beer. Pigeony Poll, harlot and outcast, despised for that she
+neither fought nor kept a cosh-carrier, like a respectable married
+woman, slunk and trembled in corners and yards, and wept at the sight of
+bleeding heads. As for old Beveridge, the affair so grossly excited him
+that he neglected business (he cadged and wrote begging screeves) and
+stayed in the Jago, where he strode wildly about the streets, lank and
+rusty, stabbing the air with a carving knife, and incoherently defying
+'all the lot' to come near him. Nobody did.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky Perrott and Tommy Rann found a snug fastness in Jago Row. For
+there was a fence with a loose board, which, pushed aside, revealed a
+hole where-through a very small boy might squeeze; and within were
+stored many barrows and shallows, mostly broken, and of these one,
+tilted forward and bottom up, made a hut or den, screened about with
+fence and barrows. Here they hid while the Learys swept the Jago, and
+hence they issued from time to time to pound such youngsters of the
+other side as might come in sight. The bits of iron railing made
+imposing weapons, but were a trifle too big and heavy for rapid use in
+their puny hands. Still, Dicky managed to double up little Billy Leary
+with a timely lunge in the stomach, and Tommy Rann made Bobby Harnwell's
+nose bleed very satisfactorily. On the other hand, the bump on Tommy
+Rann's forehead was widened by the visitation of a stick, and Dicky
+Perrott sustained a very hopeful punch in the eye, which he cherished
+enthusiastically with a view to an honourable blackness. In the snuggery
+intervals they explained their prowess one to another, and Dicky alluded
+to his intention, when he was a man, to buy a very long sword wherewith
+to cut off the Learys' heads: Tommy Rann inclining, however, to a gun,
+with which one might also shoot birds.</p>
+
+<p>The battle flagged a little toward mid-day, but waxed lively again as
+the afternoon began. It was then that Dicky Perrott, venturing some way
+from the retreat, found himself in a scrimmage, and a man snatched away
+his piece of iron and floored a Leary with it. Gratifying as was the
+distinction of aiding in the exploit, Dicky mourned the loss of the
+weapon almost unto tears, and Tommy Rann would not go turn-about with
+the other, but kept it wholly for himself; so Dicky was fain to hunt
+sorrowfully for a mere stick. Even a disengaged stick was not easy to
+find just then. So Dicky, emerging from the Jago, tried Meakin Street,
+where there were shops, but unsuccessfully, and so came round by Luck
+Row, a narrow way from Meakin Street by Walker's cook shop, up through
+the Jago.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Dicky's mother, left with the baby, fastened the door as well as she
+might, and trembled. Indeed she had reason. The time of Josh Perrott's
+return was a matter of doubt, but when he did come he would want
+something to eat; it was for that he had left the money. But Dicky was
+out, and there was nothing in the cupboard. From the window she saw
+divers fights in Jago Court; and a man lay for near two hours on the
+stones with a cut on his temple. As for herself, she was no favourite in
+the neighbourhood at any time. For one thing, her husband did not carry
+the cosh. Then she was an alien who had never entirely fallen into Jago
+ways; she had soon grown sluttish and dirty, but she was never drunk,
+she never quarrelled, she did not gossip freely. Also her husband beat
+her but rarely, and then not with a chair nor a poker. Justly irritated
+by such superiorities as these, the women of the Jago were ill-disposed
+to brook another: which was, that Hannah Perrott had been married in
+church. For these reasons she was timid at the most peaceful of times,
+but now, with Ranns and Learys on the war-path, and herself obnoxious to
+both, she trembled. She wished Dicky would come and do her errand. But
+there was no sign of him, and mid-day wore into afternoon. It was late
+for Josh as it was, and he would be sure to come home irritable: it was
+his way when a bad head from overnight struggled with morning beer. If
+he found nothing to eat there would be trouble.</p>
+
+<p>At length she resolved to go herself. There was a lull in the outer din,
+and what there was seemed to come from the farther parts of Honey Lane
+and Jago Row. She would slip across by Luck Row to Meakin Street and be
+back in five minutes. She took up little Looey and went.</p>
+
+<p>And as Dicky, stickless, turned into Luck Row, there arose a loud shriek
+and then another, and then in a changed voice a succession of long
+screams with a regular breath-pause. Sally Green again! He ran, turned
+into Old Jago Street, and saw.</p>
+
+<p>Sprawled on her face in the foul road lay a writhing woman and screamed;
+while squeezed under her arm was a baby with mud in its eyes and a cut
+cheek, crying weakly; and spread over all, clutching her prey by hair
+and wrist, Sally Green hung on the nape like a terrier, jaws clenched,
+head shaking.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Dicky saw it in a flash, and in an instant he had flung himself on
+Sally Green, kicking, striking, biting and crying, for he had seen his
+mother and Looey. The kicks wasted themselves among the woman's
+petticoats, and the blows were feeble; but the sharp teeth were meeting
+in the shoulder-flesh, when help came.</p>
+
+<p>Norah Walsh, vanquished champion, now somewhat recovered, looked from a
+window, saw her enemy vulnerable, and ran out armed with a bottle. She
+stopped at the kerb to knock the bottom off the bottle, and then, with
+an exultant shout, seized Sally Green by the hair and stabbed her about
+the face with the jagged points. Blinded with blood, Sally released her
+hold on Mrs Perrott and rolled on her back, struggling fiercely; but to
+no end, for Norah Walsh, kneeling on her breast, stabbed and stabbed
+again, till pieces of the bottle broke away. Sally's yells and plunges
+ceased, and a man pulled Norah off. On him she turned, and he was fain
+to run, while certain Learys found a truck which might carry Sally to
+the hospital.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Hannah Perrott was gone indoors, hysterical and helpless. She had scarce
+crossed the street on her errand when she had met Sally Green in quest
+of female Ranns. Mrs Perrott was not a Rann, but she was not a Leary, so
+it came to the same thing. Moreover, there was her general
+obnoxiousness. She had tried to run, but that was useless; and now,
+sobbing and bleeding, she was merely conscious of being gently led,
+almost carried, indoors and upstairs. She was laid back on the bed, and
+somebody loosened her hair and wiped her face and neck, giving her
+hoarse, comforting words. Then she saw the face&mdash;scared though coarse
+and pitted, and red about the eyes&mdash;that bent over her. It was Pigeony
+Poll's.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky had followed her in, no longer the hero of the Jago Row retreat,
+but with his face tearful and distorted, carrying the baby in his arms,
+and wiping the mud from her eyes. Now he sat on the little box and
+continued his ministrations, with fear in his looks as he glanced at his
+mother on the bed.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Without, the fight rallied once more. The Learys ran to avenge Sally
+Green, and the Ranns met them with a will. Down by the Bag of Nails a
+party of Ranns was driven between the posts and through the gut into
+Shoreditch High Street, where a stand was made until Fag Dawson dropped,
+with a shoemaker's knife sticking under his arm-pit. Then the Ranns
+left, with most of the Learys after them, and Fag Dawson was carried to
+a chemist's by the police, never to floor a Rann again. For he was
+chived in the left lung.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the fight ended. For a faction fight in the Jago, with a few broken
+heads and ribs and an odd knife wound here and there&mdash;even with a death
+in the hospital from kicks or what not&mdash;was all very well; but when it
+came to homicide in the open High Street, the police drew the line, and
+entered the Jago in force. Ordinarily, a peep now and again from a
+couple of policemen between the 'Posties' was all the supervision the
+Jago had, although three policemen had been seen to walk the length of
+Old Jago Street together, and there were raids in force for special
+captures. There was a raid in force now, and the turmoil ceased. Nothing
+would have pleased both Ranns and Learys better than to knock over two
+or three policemen, for kicking-practice; but there were too many for
+the sport, and for hours they patrolled the Jago's closest passages. Of
+course nobody knew who chived Fag Dawson. No inquiring policeman ever
+found anybody in the Old Jago who knew anything, even to the harm of
+his bitterest foe. It was the sole commandment that ran there:&mdash;'Thou
+shalt not nark.'</p>
+
+<p>That night it was known that there would be a fight between Josh Perrott
+and Billy Leary, once the latter grew well. For Josh Perrott came home,
+saw his wife, and turned Rann on the spot. But for the police in the
+Jago that night, there would have been many a sore head, if no worse,
+among the Learys, by visitation of Josh Perrott. Sally Green's husband
+had fled years ago, and Billy Leary, her brother, was the obvious mark
+for Josh's vengeance. He was near as eminent a fighter among the men as
+his sister among the women, and a charming scrap was anticipated. It
+would come off, of course, in Jago Court one Sunday morning, as all
+fights of distinction did; and perhaps somebody in the High Mob would
+put up stakes.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the morning the police still held the Jago. Their presence
+embarrassed many, but none more than Dicky Perrott, who would always
+take a turning, or walk the other way, at sight of a policeman. Dicky
+got out of Old Jago Street early, and betook him to Meakin Street, where
+there were chandlers' shops with sugar in their windows, and cook-shops
+with pudding. He designed working through by these to Shoreditch High
+Street, there to crown his solace by contemplation of the cake-shop.
+But, as he neared Weech's coffee-shop, scarce half through Meakin
+Street, there stood Weech himself at the door, grinning and nodding
+affably, and beckoning him. He was a pleasant man, this Mr Aaron Weech,
+who sang hymns aloud in the back parlour, and hummed the tunes in the
+shop: a prosperous, white-aproned, whiskered, half-bald, smirking
+tradesman, who bent and spoke amiably to boys, looking sharply in their
+eyes, but talked to a man mostly with his gaze on the man's waistcoat.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, there seemed to be something about Mr Aaron Weech especially
+attractive to youth. Nearly all his customers were boys and girls,
+though not boys and girls who looked likely to pay a great deal in the
+way of refreshment, much as they took. But he was ever indulgent, and at
+all times accessible to his young clients. Even on Sunday (though, of
+course, his shutters were kept rigidly up on the Day of Rest) a
+particular tap would bring him hot-foot to the door: not to sell coffee,
+for Mr Weech was no Sabbath-breaker.</p>
+
+<p>Now he stood at his door, and invited Dicky with nods and becks. Dicky,
+all wondering, and alert to dodge in case the thing were a mere device
+to bring him within striking distance, went.</p>
+
+<p>'W'y Dicky Perrott,' quoth Mr Weech in a tone of genial surprise, 'I
+b'lieve you could drink a cup o' cawfy!'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky, wondering how Mr Weech had learnt his name, believed he could.</p>
+
+<p>'An' eat a slice o' cake too, I'll be bound,' Mr Weech added.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky's glance leapt. Yes, he could eat a slice of cake too.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, I knew it,' said Mr Weech, triumphantly; 'I can always tell.' He
+rubbed Dicky's cap about his head, and drew him into the shop, at this
+hour bare of customers. At the innermost compartment they stopped, and
+Mr Weech, with a gentle pressure on the shoulders, seated Dicky at the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>He brought the coffee, and not a single slice of cake, but two. True, it
+was not cake of Elevation Mission quality, nor was it so good as that
+shown at the shop in High Street: it was of a browner, dumpier, harder
+nature, and the currants were gritty and few. But cake it was, and to
+consider it critically were unworthy. Dicky bolted it with less comfort
+than he might, for Mr Weech watched him keenly across the table. And,
+indeed, from some queer cause, he felt an odd impulse to cry. It was
+the first time that he had ever been given anything, kindly and
+ungrudgingly.</p>
+
+<p>He swallowed the last crumb, washed it down with the dregs of his cup,
+and looked sheepishly across at Mr Weech.</p>
+
+<p>'Goes down awright, don't it?' that benefactor remarked. 'Ah, I like to
+see you enjoyin' of yerself. I'm very fond o' you young 'uns: 'specially
+clever 'uns like you.'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky had never been called clever before, so far as he could recollect,
+and he wondered at it now. Mr Weech, leaning back, contemplated him
+smilingly for some seconds, and then proceeded. 'Yus,' he said, 'you're
+the sort o' boy as can 'ave cawfy and cake w'enever you want it, you
+are.'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky wondered more, and his face said as much. 'You know,' Mr Weech
+pursued, winking again, grinning and nodding. 'That was a fine watch you
+found the other day. Y'ought to 'a' brought it to me.'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky was alarmed. How did Mr Weech learn about the watch? Perhaps he
+was a friend of the funny old man who lost it. Dicky half rose, but his
+affable patron leaned across and pushed him back on the seat. 'You
+needn't be frightened,' he said. 'I ain't goin' to say nothink to
+nobody. But I know all about it, mind, an' I could if I liked. You found
+the watch, an' it was a red 'un, on a bit o' ribbin. Well, then you went
+and took it 'ome, like a little fool. Wot does yer father do? W'y 'e ups
+an' lathers you with 'is belt, an' 'e keeps the watch 'isself. That's
+all you git for yer pains. See&mdash;I know all about it.' And Mr Weech gazed
+on Dicky Perrott with a fixed grin.</p>
+
+<p>''Oo toldjer?' Dicky managed to ask at last.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah!'&mdash;this with a great emphasis and a tapping of the forefinger beside
+the nose&mdash;'I don't want much tellin': it ain't much as goes on 'ereabout
+I don't know of. Never mind 'ow. P'raps I got a little bird as
+w'ispers&mdash;p'raps I do it some other way. Any'ow I know. It ain't no good
+any boy tryin' to do somethink unbeknownst to me, mindjer.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr Weech's head lay aside, his grin widened, his glance was sidelong,
+his forefinger pointed from his temple over Dicky's head, and
+altogether he looked so very knowing that Dicky shuffled in his seat. By
+what mysterious means was this new-found friend so well informed? The
+doubt troubled him, for Dicky knew nothing of Mr Aaron Weech's
+conversation, an hour before, with Tommy Rann.</p>
+
+<p>'But it's awright, bless yer,' Mr Weech went on presently. 'Nobody's
+none the wuss for me knowin' about 'em.... Well, we was a-talkin' about
+the watch, wasn't we? All you got after sich a lot o' trouble was a
+woppin' with a belt. That was too bad.' Mr Weech's voice was piteous and
+sympathetic. 'After you a-findin' sich a nice watch&mdash;a red 'un an'
+all!&mdash;you gits nothink for yerself but a beltin'. Never mind, you'll do
+better next time&mdash;I'll take care o' that. I don't like to see a clever
+boy put upon. You go an' find another, or somethink else&mdash;anythink
+good&mdash;an' then you bring it 'ere.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr Weech's friendly sympathy extinguished Dicky's doubt. 'I didn't find
+it,' he said, shy but proud. 'It was a click&mdash;I sneaked it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Eh?' ejaculated Mr Weech, a sudden picture of blank incomprehension.
+'Eh? What? Click? Wot's a click? Sneaked? Wot's that? I dunno nothink
+about no talk o' that sort, an' I don't want to. It's my belief it means
+somethink wrong&mdash;but I dunno, an' I don't want to. 'Ear that? Eh? Don't
+let me 'ave no more o' that, or you'd better not come near me agin. If
+you <i>find</i> somethink, awright: you come to me an' I'll give ye somethink
+for it, if it's any good. It ain't no business of anybody's <i>where</i> you
+find it, o' course, an' I don't want to know. But clicks and
+sneaks&mdash;them's Greek to me, an' I don't want to learn 'em. Unnerstand
+that? Nice talk to respectable people, with yer clicks an' sneaks!'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky blushed a little, and felt very guilty without in the least
+understanding the offence. But Mr Weech's virtuous indignation subsided
+as quickly as it had arisen, and he went on as amiably as ever.</p>
+
+<p>'When you <i>find</i> anythink,' he said, 'jist like you found that watch,
+don't tell nobody, an' don't let nobody see it. Bring it 'ere quiet,
+when there ain't any p'liceman in the street, an' come right through to
+the back o' the shop, an' say, "I come to clean the knives." Unnerstand?
+"I come to clean the knives." There ain't no knives to clean&mdash;it's on'y
+a way o' tellin' me you got somethink without other people knowin'. An'
+then I'll give you somethink for it&mdash;money p'raps, or p'raps cake or wot
+not. Don't forgit. "I come to clean the knives." See?'</p>
+
+<p>Yes, Dicky understood perfectly; and Dicky saw a new world of dazzling
+delights. Cake&mdash;limitless cake, coffee, and the like whenever he might
+feel moved thereunto; but more than all, money&mdash;actual money. Good broad
+pennies, perhaps whole shillings&mdash;perhaps even more still: money to buy
+bullock's liver for dinner, or tripe, or what you fancied: saveloys,
+baked potatoes from the can on cold nights, a little cart to wheel Looey
+in, a boat from a toy-shop with sails!</p>
+
+<p>'There's no end o' things to be found all over the place, an' a sharp
+boy like you can find 'em every day. If you don't find 'em, someone
+else will; there's plenty on 'em about on the look-out, an' you got jist
+as much right as them. On'y mind!'&mdash;Mr Weech was suddenly stern and
+serious, and his forefinger was raised impressively&mdash;'you know you can't
+do anythink without I know, an' if you say a word&mdash;if you say a word,'
+his fist came on the table with a bang, 'somethink 'll happen to you.
+Somethink bad.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr Weech rose, and was pleasant again, though business-like. 'Now, you
+just go an' find somethink,' he said. 'Look sharp about it, an' don't go
+an' git in trouble. The cawfy's a penny, an' the cake's a penny&mdash;ought
+prop'ly to be twopence, but say a penny this time. That's twopence you
+owe me, an' you better bring somethink an' pay it off quick. So go
+along.'</p>
+
+<p>This was an unforeseen tag to the entertainment. For the first time in
+his life Dicky was in debt. It was a little disappointing to find the
+coffee and cake no gift after all: though, indeed, it now seemed foolish
+to have supposed they were; for in Dicky Perrott's world people did not
+give things away&mdash;that were the act of a fool. Thus Dicky, with his
+hands in his broken pockets, and thought in his small face, whereon
+still stood the muddy streaks of yesterday's tears, trudged out of Mr
+Aaron Weech's shop-door, and along Meakin Street.</p>
+
+<p>Now he was beginning the world seriously, and must face the fact. Truly
+the world had been serious enough for him hitherto, but that he knew
+not. Now he was of an age when most boys were thieving for themselves,
+and he owed money like a man. True it was, as Mr Weech had said, that
+everybody&mdash;the whole Jago&mdash;was on the look-out for himself. Plainly he
+must take his share, lest it fall to others. As to the old gentleman's
+watch, he had but been beforehand. Through foolish ingenuousness he had
+lost it, and his father had got it, who could so much more easily steal
+one for himself; for he was a strong man, and had but to knock over
+another man at any night-time. Nobody should hear of future clicks but
+Mr Weech. Each for himself? Come, he must open his eyes.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>There was no chance all along Meakin Street. The chandlers and the
+keepers of cook-shops knew their neighbourhood too well to leave
+articles unguarded. Soon Dicky reached Shoreditch High Street. There
+things were a little more favourable. There were shops, as he well
+remembered, where goods were sometimes exhibited at the doors and
+outside the windows; but to-day there seemed to be no chance of the
+sort. As for the people, he was too short to try pockets, and indeed the
+High Street rarely gave passage to a more unpromising lot. Moreover,
+from robbery from the person he knew he must abstain, except for such
+uncommon opportunities as that of the Bishop's watch, for some years
+yet.</p>
+
+<p>He hung about the doors and windows of shop after shop, hoping for a
+temporary absence of the shop-keeper, which might leave something
+snatchable. But he hoped in vain. From most shops he was driven away,
+for the Shoreditch trader is not slow to judge the purpose of a
+loitering boy. So he passed nearly two hours: when at last he saw his
+chance. It came in an advantageous part of High Street, not far from the
+'Posties,' though on the opposite side of the way. A nurse-girl had left
+a perambulator at a shop door, while she bought inside, and on the
+perambulator lay loose a little skin rug, from under which a little fat
+leg stuck and waved aloft. Dicky set his back to the shop, and sidled to
+within reach of the perambulator. But it chanced that at this moment the
+nurse-girl stepped to the door, and she made a snatch at his arm as he
+lifted the rug. This he dropped at once, and was swinging leisurely away
+(for he despised the chase of any nurse-girl) when a man took him
+suddenly by the shoulder. Quick as a weasel, Dicky ducked under the
+man's arm, pulled his shoulder clear, dropped forward and rested an
+instant on the tips of his fingers to avoid the catch of the other hand,
+and shot out into the road. The man tried to follow, but Dicky ran under
+the belly of a standing horse, under the head of another that trotted,
+across the fore-platform of a tramcar&mdash;behind the driver's back&mdash;and so
+over to the 'Posties.'</p>
+
+<p>He slouched into the Jago, disappointed. As he crossed Edge Lane, he was
+surprised to perceive a stranger&mdash;a toff, indeed&mdash;who walked slowly
+along, looking up right and left at the grimy habitations about him. He
+wore a tall hat, and his clothes were black, and of a pattern that Dicky
+remembered to have seen at the Elevation Mission. They were, in fact,
+the clothes of a clergyman. For himself, he was tall and soundly built,
+with a certain square muscularity of face, and of age about thirty-five.
+He had ventured into the Jago because the police were in possession,
+Dicky thought; and wondered in what plight he would leave, had he come
+at another time. But losing view of the stranger, and making his way
+along Old Jago Street, Dicky perceived that indeed the police were
+gone, and that the Jago was free.</p>
+
+<p>He climbed the broken stairs and pushed into the first-floor back,
+hopeful, though more doubtful, of dinner. There was none. His mother,
+tied about the neck with rags, lay across the bed nursing the damage of
+yesterday, and commiserating herself. A yard from her lay Looey, sick
+and ailing in a new way, but disregarded. Dicky moved to lift her, but
+at that she cried the more, and he was fain to let her lie. She rolled
+her head from side to side, and raised her thin little hand vaguely
+toward it, with feverishly working fingers. Dicky felt her head and she
+screamed again. There was a lump at the side, a hard, sharp lump; got
+from the stones of the roadway yesterday. And there was a curious
+quality, a rather fearful quality, in the little wails: uneasily
+suggestive of the screams of Sally Green's victims.</p>
+
+<p>Father was out, prowling. There was nothing eatable in the cupboard, and
+there seemed nothing at home worth staying for. He took another look at
+Looey, but refrained from touching her, and went out.</p>
+
+<p>The opposite door on the landing was wide open, and he could hear nobody
+in the room. He had never seen this door open before, and now he
+ventured on a peep: for the tenants of the front room were strangers,
+late arrivals, and interlopers. Their name was Roper. Roper was a pale
+cabinet-maker, fallen on evil times and out of work. He had a pale wife,
+disliked because of her neatly-kept clothes, her exceeding use of soap
+and water, her aloofness from gossip. She had a deadly pale baby; also
+there was a pale hunchbacked boy of near Dicky's age. Collectively the
+Ropers were disliked as strangers: because they furnished their own
+room, and in an obnoxiously complete style; because Roper did not drink,
+nor brawl, nor beat his wife, nor do anything all day but look for work;
+because all these things were a matter of scandalous arrogance,
+impudently subversive of Jago custom and precedent. Mrs Perrott was bad
+enough, but such people as these!...</p>
+
+<p>Dicky had never before seen quite such a room as this. Everything was so
+clean: the floor, the windows, the bed-clothes. Also there was a strip
+of old carpet on the floor. There were two perfectly sound chairs; and
+two pink glass vases on the mantel-piece; and a clock. Nobody was in the
+room, and Dicky took a step farther. The clock attracted him again. It
+was a small, cheap, nickel-plated, cylindrical thing, of American make,
+and it reminded him at once of the Bishop's watch. It was not gold,
+certainly, but it was a good deal bigger, and it could go&mdash;it was going.
+Dicky stepped back and glanced at the landing. Then he darted into the
+room, whipped the clock under the breast of the big jacket, and went for
+the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Half way down he met the pale hunchback ascending. Left at home alone,
+he had been standing in the front doorway. He saw Dicky's haste, saw
+also the suspicious bulge under his jacket, and straightway seized
+Dicky's arm. 'Where 'a' you bin?' he asked sharply. 'Bin in our room?
+What you got there?'</p>
+
+<p>'Nothin' o' yours, 'ump. Git out o' that!' Dicky pushed him aside. 'If
+you don't le' go I'll corpse ye!'</p>
+
+<p>But one arm and hand was occupied with the bulge, and the other was for
+the moment unequal to the work of driving off the assailant. The two
+children wrangled and struggled downstairs, through the doorway and into
+the street: the hunchback weak, but infuriate, buffeting, biting and
+whimpering; Dicky infuriate too, but alert for a chance to break away
+and run. So they scrambled together across the street, Dicky dragging
+away from the house at every step; and just at the corner of Luck Row,
+getting his fore-arm across the other's face, he back-heeled him, and
+the little hunchback fell heavily, and lay breathless and sobbing, while
+Dicky scampered through Luck Row and round the corner into Meakin
+Street.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Weech was busier now, for there were customers. But Dicky and his
+bulge he saw ere they were well over the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah yus, Dicky,' he said, coming to meet him. 'I was expectin' you. Come
+in&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>In the swe-e-et by an' by,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>We shall meet on that beautiful shaw-er!</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Come in 'ere.' And still humming his hymn, he led Dicky into the shop
+parlour.</p>
+
+<p>Here Dicky produced the clock, which Mr Weech surveyed with no great
+approval. 'You'll 'ave to try an' do better than this, you know,' he
+said. 'But any'ow 'ere it is, sich as it is. It about clears auf wot you
+owe, I reckon. Want some dinner?'</p>
+
+<p>This was a fact, and Dicky admitted it.</p>
+
+<p>'Awright&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>In the swe-e-e-t by an' by</i>,&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>come out an' set down. I'll bring you somethink 'ot.'</p>
+
+<p>This proved to be a very salt bloater, a cup of the usual muddy coffee,
+tasting of burnt toast, and a bit of bread: afterwards supplemented by a
+slice of cake. This to Dicky was a banquet. Moreover, there was the
+adult dignity of taking your dinner in a coffee-shop, which Dicky
+supported indomitably now that he began to feel at ease in Mr Weech's:
+leaning back in his seat, swinging his feet, and looking about at the
+walls with the grocers' almanacks hanging thereto, and the Sunday School
+Anniversary bills of past date, gathered from afar to signalise the
+elevated morals of the establishment.</p>
+
+<p>'Done?' queried Mr Weech in his ear. 'Awright, don't 'ang about 'ere
+then. Bloater's a penny, bread a 'a'peny, cawfy a penny, cake a penny.
+You'll owe thrippence a'peny now.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Dicky Perrott and the small hunchback were hauling and struggling
+across the street, Old Fisher came down from the top-floor back, wherein
+he dwelt with his son Bob, Bob's wife and two sisters, and five
+children: an apartment in no way so clean as the united efforts of ten
+people might be expected to have made it. Old Fisher, on whose grimy
+face the wrinkles were deposits of mud, stopped at the open door on the
+first floor, and, as Dicky had done, he took a peep. Perplexed at the
+monstrous absence of dirt, and encouraged by the stillness, Old Fisher
+also ventured within. Nobody was in charge, and Old Fisher, mentally
+pricing the pink glass vases at threepence, made for a small chest in
+the corner of the room, and lifted the lid. Within lay many of Roper's
+tools, from among which he had that morning taken such as he might want
+on an emergent call to work, to carry as he tramped Curtain Road.
+Clearly these were the most valuable things in the place; and, slipping
+a few small articles into his pockets, Old Fisher took a good double
+handful of the larger, and tramped upstairs with them. Presently he
+returned with Bob's missis, and together they started with more. As they
+emerged, however, there on the landing stood the little hunchback,
+sobbing and smearing his face with his sleeve. At sight of this new
+pillage he burst into sharp wails, standing impotent on the landing, his
+streaming eyes following the man and woman ascending before him. Old
+Fisher, behind, stumped the stairs with a clumsy affectation of
+absent-mindedness; the woman, in front, looked down, merely indifferent.
+Scarce were they vanished above, however, when the little hunchback
+heard his father and mother on the lower stairs.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Dicky came moodily back from his dinner at Mr Weech's, plunged in
+mystified computation: starting with a debt of twopence, he had paid Mr
+Weech an excellent clock&mdash;a luxurious article in Dicky's eyes&mdash;had eaten
+a bloater, and had emerged from the transaction owing threepence
+halfpenny. Of what such a clock cost he had no notion, though he felt it
+must be some inconceivable sum. As Mr Weech put it, the adjustment of
+accounts would seem to be quite correct; but the broad fact that all had
+ended in increasing his debt by three half-pence, remained and perplexed
+him. He remembered having seen such clocks in a shop in Norton Folgate.
+To ask the price, in person, were but to be chased out of the shop; but
+they were probably ticketed, and perhaps he might ask some bystander to
+read the ticket. This brought the reflection that, after all, reading
+was a useful accomplishment on occasion: though a matter of too much
+time and trouble to be worth while. Dicky had never been to school; for
+the Elementary Education Act ran in the Jago no more than any other Act
+of Parliament. There was a Board School, truly, away out of the Jago
+bounds, by the corner of Honey Lane, where children might go free, and
+where some few Jago children did go now and again, when boots were to be
+given away, or when tickets were to be had, for tea, or soup, or the
+like. But most parents were of Josh Perrott's opinion: that school-going
+was a practice best never begun; for then the child was never heard of,
+and there was no chance of inquiries or such trouble. Not that any such
+inquiries were common in the Jago, or led to anything.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Dicky, minded to know if his adventure had made any stir in the
+house, carried his way deviously toward home. Working through the parts
+beyond Jago Row, he fetched round into Honey Lane, so coming at New
+Jago Street from the farther side. Choosing one of the houses whose
+backs gave on Jago Court, he slipped through the passage, and so, by the
+back yard, crawled through the broken fence into the court. Left and
+right were the fronts of houses, four a side. Before him, to the right
+of the narrow archway leading to Old Jago Street, was the window of his
+own home. He gained the back yard quietly, and at the kitchen door met
+Tommy Rann.</p>
+
+<p>'Come on,' called Tommy. ''Ere's a barney! They're a-pitchin' into them
+noo 'uns&mdash;Roperses. Roperses sez Fisherses is sneaked their things. They
+<i>are</i> a-gittin' of it!'</p>
+
+<p>From the stairs, indeed, came shouts and curses, bumps and sobs and
+cries. The first landing and half the stairs were full of people, men
+and women, Ranns and Learys together. When Ranns joined Learys it was an
+ill time for them they marched against; and never were they so ready and
+so anxious to combine as after a fight between themselves, were but some
+common object of attack available. Here it was. Here were these
+pestilent outsiders, the Ropers, assailing the reputation of the
+neighbourhood by complaining of being robbed. As though their mere
+presence in the Jago, with their furniture and their superiority, were
+not obnoxious enough: they must turn about and call their neighbours
+thieves! They had been tolerated too long already. They should now be
+given something for themselves, and have some of their exasperating
+respectability knocked off; and if, in the confusion, their portable
+articles of furniture and bed-clothing found their way into more
+deserving hands&mdash;why, serve them right.</p>
+
+<p>The requisite volleys of preliminary abuse having been discharged, more
+active operations began under cover of fresh volleys. Dicky, with Tommy
+Rann behind him, struggled up the stairs among legs and skirts, and saw
+that the Ropers, the man flushed, but the woman paler than ever, were
+striving to shut their door. Within, the hunchback and the baby cried,
+and without, those on the landing, skidding the door with their feet,
+pushed inward, and now began to strike and maul. Somebody seized the
+man's wrist, and Norah Walsh got the woman by the hair and dragged her
+head down. In a peep through the scuffle Dicky saw her face, ashen and
+sweat-beaded, in the jamb of the door, and saw Norah Walsh's red fist
+beat into it twice. Then somebody came striding up the stairs, and Dicky
+was pushed farther back. Over the shoulders of those about him, Dicky
+saw a tall hat, and then the head beneath it. It was the stranger he had
+seen in Edge Lane&mdash;the parson: active and resolute. Norah Walsh he took
+by the shoulder, and flung back among the others, and as he turned on
+him, the man who held Roper's wrist released it and backed off.</p>
+
+<p>'What is this?' demanded the new-comer, stern and hard of face. 'What is
+all this?' He bent his frown on one and another about him, and, as he
+did it, some shrank uneasily, and on the faces of others fell the blank
+lack of expression that was wont to meet police inquiries in the Jago.
+Dicky looked to see this man beaten down, kicked and stripped. But a
+well-dressed stranger was so new a thing in the Jago, this one had
+dropped among them so suddenly, and he had withal so bold a confidence,
+that the Jagos stood irresolute. A toff was not a person to be attacked
+without due consideration. After such a person there were apt to be
+inquiries, with money to back them, and vengeance sharp and certain: the
+thing, indeed, was commonly thought too risky. And this man, so
+unflinchingly confident, must needs have reason for it. He might have
+the police at instant call&mdash;they might be back in the Jago at the
+moment. And he flung them back, commanded them, cowed them with his
+hard, intelligent eyes, like a tamer among beasts.</p>
+
+<p>'Understand this, now,' he went on, with a sharp tap of his stick on the
+floor. 'This is a sort of thing I will <i>not</i> tolerate in my parish&mdash;in
+this parish: nor in any other place where I may meet it. Go away, and
+try to be ashamed of yourselves&mdash;go. Go, all of you, I say, to your own
+homes: I shall come there and talk to you again soon. Go along, Sam
+Cash&mdash;you've a broken head already, I see. Take it away: I shall come
+and see you too.'</p>
+
+<p>Those on the stairs had melted away like punished school-children. Most
+of the others, after a moment of averted face and muttered justification
+one to another, were dragging their feet, each with a hang-dog pretence
+of sauntering airily off from some sight no longer interesting. Sam
+Cash, who had already seen the stranger in the street, and was thus
+perhaps a trifle less startled than the others at his advent, stood,
+however, with some assumption of virtuous impudence, till amazed by
+sudden address in his own name: whereat, clean discomfited, he
+ignominiously turned tail and sneaked downstairs in meaner case than the
+rest. How should this strange parson know him, and know his name?
+Plainly he must be connected with the police. He had brought out the
+name as pat as you please. So argued Sam Cash with his fellows in the
+outer street: never recalling that Jerry Gullen had called aloud to him
+by name, when first he observed the parson in the street; had called to
+him, indeed, to haste to the bashing of the Ropers; and thus had first
+given the stranger notice of the proceeding. But it was the way of the
+Jago that its mean cunning saw a mystery and a terror where simple
+intelligence saw there was none.</p>
+
+<p>As the crowd began to break up, Dicky pushed his own door a little open
+behind him, and there stood on his own ground, as the others cleared
+off; and the hunchback ventured a peep from behind his swooning mother.
+'There y'are, that's 'im!' he shouted, pointing at Dicky. ''E begun it!
+'E took the clock!' Dicky instantly dropped behind his door, and shut it
+fast.</p>
+
+<p>The invaders had all gone&mdash;the Fishers had made upstairs in the
+beginning&mdash;before the parson turned and entered the Ropers' room. In
+five minutes he emerged and strode upstairs: whence he returned, after a
+still shorter interval, herding before him Old Fisher and Bob Fisher's
+missis, sulky and reluctant, carrying tools.</p>
+
+<p>And thus it was that the Reverend Henry Sturt first addressed his
+parishioners. The parish, besides the Jago, comprised Meakin Street and
+some small way beyond, and it was to this less savage district that his
+predecessor had confined his attention: preaching every Sunday in a
+stable, in an alley behind a disused shop, and distributing loaves and
+sixpences to the old women who attended regularly on that account. For
+to go into the Jago were for him mere wasted effort. And so, indeed, the
+matter had been since the parish came into being.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2>
+
+
+<p>When Dicky retreated from the landing and shut the door behind him, he
+slipped the bolt, a strong one, put there by Josh Perrott himself,
+possibly as an accessory to escape by the window in some possible
+desperate pass. For a little he listened, but no sound hinted of attack
+from without, and he turned to his mother.</p>
+
+<p>Josh Perrott had been out since early morning, and Dicky, too, had done
+no more than look in for a moment in search of dinner. Hannah Perrott,
+grown tired of self commiseration, felt herself neglected and
+aggrieved&mdash;slighted in her state of invalid privilege. So she
+transferred some of her pity from her sore neck to her desolate
+condition as misprized wife and mother, and the better to feel it,
+proceeded to martyrise herself, with melancholy pleasure, by a
+nerveless show of 'setting to rights' in the room&mdash;a domestic novelty,
+perfunctory as it was. Looey, still restless and weeping, she left on
+the bed, for, being neglected herself, it was not her mood to tend the
+baby; she would aggravate the relish of her sorrows in her own way.
+Besides, Looey had been given something to eat a long time ago, and had
+not eaten it yet: with her there was nothing else to do. So that now, as
+she dragged a rag along the grease-strewn mantel-piece, Mrs Perrott
+greeted Dicky:&mdash;'There y'are, Dicky, comin' 'inderin' 'ere jest when I'm
+a-puttin' things to rights.' And she sighed with the weight of another
+grievance.</p>
+
+<p>Looey lay on her back, faintly and vainly struggling to turn her fearful
+little face from the light. Clutched in her little fist was the unclean
+stump of bread she had held for hours. Dicky plucked a soft piece and
+essayed to feed her with it, but the dry little mouth rejected the
+morsel, and the head turned feverishly from side to side to the sound of
+that novel cry. She was hot wherever Dicky touched her, and presently
+he said:&mdash;'Mother, I b'lieve Looey's queer. I think she wants some
+med'cine.'</p>
+
+<p>His mother shook her head peevishly. 'O, you an' Looey's a noosance,'
+she said. 'A lot you care about <i>me</i> bein' queer, you an' yer father
+too, leavin' me all alone like this, an' me feelin' ready to drop, an'
+got the room to do an' all. I wish you'd go away an' stop 'inderin' of
+me like this.'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky took but another look at Looey, and then slouched out. The landing
+was clear, and the Ropers' door was shut. He wondered what had become of
+the stranger with the tall hat&mdash;whether he was in the Ropers' room or
+not. The thought hurried him, for he feared to have that stranger asking
+him questions about the clock. He got out into the street, thoughtful.
+He had some compunctions in the matter of that clock, now. Not that he
+could in any reasonable way blame himself. There the clock had stood at
+his mercy, and by all Jago custom and ethic it was his if only he could
+get clear away with it. This he had done, and he had no more concern in
+the business, strictly speaking. Nevertheless, since he had seen the
+woman's face in the jamb of the door, he felt a sort of pity for
+her&mdash;that she should have lost her clock. No doubt she had enjoyed its
+possession, as, indeed, he would have enjoyed it himself, had he not had
+to take it instantly to Mr Weech. And his fancy wandered off in
+meditation of what he would do with a clock of his own. To begin with,
+of course, he would open it, and discover the secret of its works and
+its ticking: perhaps thereby discovering how to make a clock himself.
+Also he would frequently wind it up, and he would show the inside to
+Looey, in confidence. It would stand on the mantel-piece, and raise the
+social position of the family. People would come respectfully to ask the
+time, and he would tell them, with an air. Yes, certainly a clock must
+stand eminent among the things he would buy, when he had plenty of
+money. He must look out for more clicks: the one way to riches.</p>
+
+<p>As to the Ropers, again. Bad it must be, indeed, to be deprived suddenly
+of a clock, after long experience of the joys it brought; and Norah
+Walsh had punched the woman in the face, and clawed her hair, and the
+woman could not fight. Dicky was sorry for her, and straightway resolved
+to give her another clock, or, if not a clock, something that would
+please her as much. He had acquired a clock in the morning; why not
+another in the afternoon? Failing a clock, he would try for something
+else, and the Ropers should have it. The resolve gave Dicky a virtuous
+exaltation of spirit, the reward of the philanthropist.</p>
+
+<p>Again he began the prowl after likely plunder that was to be his daily
+industry. Meakin Street he did not try. The chandlers' and the
+cook-shops held nothing that might be counted a consolatory equivalent
+for a clock. Through the 'Posties' he reached Shoreditch High Street at
+once, and started.</p>
+
+<p>This time his movements aroused less suspicion. In the morning he had no
+particular prize in view, and loitered at every shop, waiting his chance
+at anything portable. Now, with a more definite object, he made his
+promenade easily, but without stopping or lounging by shop-fronts. The
+thing, whatsoever it might be, must be small, handsome, and of an
+interesting character&mdash;at least as interesting as the clock was. It must
+be small, not merely for facility of concealment and removal&mdash;though
+these were main considerations&mdash;but because stealthy presentation were
+then the easier. It would have pleased Dicky to hand over his gift
+openly, and to bask in the thanks and the consideration it would
+procure. But he had been accused of stealing the clock, and an open gift
+would savour of admission and peace-offering, whereas in that matter
+stark denial was his plain course.</p>
+
+<p>A roll of print stuff would not do; apples would not do; and fish was
+wide of his purpose. Up one side and down the other side of High Street
+he walked, his eyes instant for suggestion and opportunity. But all in
+vain. Nobody exposed clocks out of doors, and of those within not one
+but an attempt on it were simple madness. And of the things less
+desperate of access nothing was proper to the occasion: all were too
+large, too cheap, or too uninteresting. Oddly, Dicky feared failure
+more than had he been hunting for himself.</p>
+
+<p>He tried farther south, in Norton Folgate. There was a shop of cheap
+second-hand miscellanies: saddles, razors, straps, dumbbells, pistols,
+boxing gloves, trunks, bags, and billiard-balls. Many of the things hung
+about the door-posts in bunches, and within all was black, as in a cave.
+At one door-post was a pistol. Nothing could be more interesting than a
+pistol&mdash;indeed it was altogether a better possession than a clock; and
+it was a small, handy sort of thing. Probably the Ropers would be
+delighted with a pistol. He stood and regarded it with much interest.
+There were difficulties. In the first place it was beyond his reach; and
+in the second, it hung by the trigger-guard on a stout cord. Just then,
+glancing within the shop, he perceived a pair of fiery eyes regarding
+him, panther-like, from the inner gloom; and he hastily resumed his
+walk, as the Jew shop-keeper reached the door, and watched him safely
+away.</p>
+
+<p>Now he came to Bishopsgate Street, and here at last he chose the gift.
+It was at a toy-shop: a fine, flaming toy-shop, with carts, dolls, and
+hoops dangling above, and wooden horses standing below, guarding two
+baskets by the door. One contained a mixed assortment of tops, whips,
+boats, and woolly dogs; the other was lavishly filled with shining,
+round metal boxes, nobly decorated with coloured pictures, each box with
+a little cranked handle. As he looked, a tune, delightfully tinkled on
+some instrument, was heard from within the shop. Dicky peeped. There was
+a lady, with a little girl at her side who was looking eagerly at just
+such a shining, round box in the saleswoman's hands, and it was from
+that box, as the saleswoman turned the handle, that the tune came. Dicky
+was enchanted. This&mdash;this was the thing, beyond debate: a pretty little
+box that would play music whenever you turned a handle. This was a thing
+worth any fifty clocks. Indeed it was almost as good as a regular
+barrel-organ, the first thing he would buy if he were rich.</p>
+
+<p>There was a shop-boy in charge of the goods outside the window, and his
+eyes were on Dicky. So Dicky whistled absently, and strolled carelessly
+along. He swung behind a large waggon, crossed the road, and sought a
+convenient doorstep; for his mind was made up, and his business was now
+to sit down before the toy-shop, and wait his opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>A shop had been boarded up after a fire, and from its doorstep one could
+command a perfect view of the toy-shop across the broad thoroughfare
+with its crowded traffic&mdash;could sit, moreover, safe from interference.
+Here he took his seat, secure from the notice of the guardian shop-boy,
+whose attention was given to passengers on his own side. The little
+girl, gripping the new toy in her hand, came out at her mother's side
+and trotted off. For a moment Dicky reflected that the box could be
+easily snatched. But after all the little girl had but one: whereas the
+shopwoman had many, and at best could play on no more than one at a
+time.</p>
+
+<p>He resumed his watch of the shop-boy, confident that sooner or later a
+chance would come. A woman stopped to ask the price of something, and
+Dicky had half crossed the road ere the boy had begun to answer. But the
+answer was short, and the boy's attention was released too soon.</p>
+
+<p>At last the shopwoman called the boy within, and Dicky darted
+across&mdash;not directly, but so as to arrive invisibly at the side next the
+basket of music boxes. A quick glance behind him, a snatch at the box
+with the reddest picture, and a dash into the traffic did it.</p>
+
+<p>The dash would not have been called for but for the sudden re-appearance
+of the shop-boy ere the box had vanished amid the intricacies of Dicky's
+jacket. Dicky was fast, but the boy was little slower, and was,
+moreover, bigger, and stronger on his legs; and Dicky reached the other
+pavement and turned the next corner into Widegate Street, the pursuer
+scarce ten yards behind.</p>
+
+<p>It was now that he first experienced 'hot beef'&mdash;which is the Jago idiom
+denoting the plight of one harried by the cry 'Stop thief.' Down
+Widegate Street, across Sandys Row and into Raven Row he ran his best,
+clutching the hem of his jacket and the music box that lay within.
+Crossing Sandys Row a loafing lad shouldered against the shop-boy, and
+Dicky was grateful, for he made it a gain of several yards.</p>
+
+<p>But others had joined in the hunt, and Dicky for the first time began to
+fear. This was a bad day&mdash;twice already he had been chased; and now&mdash;it
+was bad. He thought little more, for a stunning fear fell upon him: the
+fear of the hunted, that calculates nothing, and is measured by no
+apprehension of consequences. He remembered that he must avoid
+Spitalfields Market, full of men who would stop him; and he knew that in
+many places where a man would be befriended many would make a virtue of
+stopping a boy. To the right along Bell Lane he made an agonised burst
+of speed, and for a while he saw not nor remembered anything; heard no
+more than dreadful shouts drawing nearer his shoulders, felt only the
+fear. But he could not last. Quick enough when fresh, he was tiny and
+ill fed, and now he felt his legs trembling and his wind going.
+Something seemed to beat on the back of his head, till he wondered madly
+if it were the shop-boy with a stick. He turned corners, and chose his
+way by mere instinct, ashen-faced, staring, open-mouthed. How soon would
+he give in, and drop? A street more&mdash;half a street&mdash;ten yards? Rolling
+and tripping, he turned one last corner and almost fell against a vast,
+fat, unkempt woman whose clothes slid from her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>''Ere y' are, boy,' said the woman, and flung him by the shoulder
+through the doorway before which she stood.</p>
+
+<p>He was saved at his extremity, for he could never have reached the
+street's end. The woman who had done it (probably she had boys of her
+own on the crook) filled the entrance with her frowsy bulk, and the
+chase straggled past. Dicky caught the stair-post for a moment's
+support, and then staggered out at the back of the house. He gasped, he
+panted, things danced blue before him, but still he clutched his jacket
+hem and the music box lying within. The back door gave on a
+cobble-paved court, with other doors, two coster's barrows, and a few
+dusty fowls. Dicky sat on a step where a door was shut, and rested his
+head against the frame.</p>
+
+<p>The beating in his head grew slower and lighter, and presently he could
+breathe with no fear of choking. He rose and moved off, still panting,
+and feeble in the legs. The court ended in an arched passage, through
+which he gained the street beyond. Here he had but to turn to the left,
+and he was in Brick Lane, and thence all was clear to the Old Jago.
+Regaining his breath and his confidence as he went, he bethought him of
+the Jago Row retreat, where he might examine his prize at leisure,
+embowered amid trucks and barrows. Thither he pushed his way, and soon,
+in the shade of the upturned barrow, he brought out the music box.
+Bright and shiny, it had taken no damage in the flight, though on his
+hands he found scratches, and on his shins bruises, got he knew not how.
+On the top of the box was the picture of a rosy little boy in crimson
+presenting a scarlet nosegay to a rosy little girl in pink, while a red
+brick mansion filled the distance and solidified the composition. The
+brilliant hoop that made the sides (silver, Dicky was convinced) was
+stamped in patterns, and the little brass handle was an irresistible
+temptation. Dicky climbed a truck, and looked about him, peeping from
+beside the loose fence-plank. Then, seeing nobody very near, he muffled
+the box as well as he could in his jacket, and turned the handle.</p>
+
+<p>This was indeed worth all the trouble. <i>Gently Does the Trick</i> was the
+tune, and Dicky, with his head aside and his ear on the bunch of jacket
+that covered the box, listened: his lips parted, his eyes seeking
+illimitable space. He played the tune through, and played it again, and
+then growing reckless, played it with the box unmuffled, till he was
+startled by a bang on the fence from without. It was but a passing boy
+with a stick, but Dicky was sufficiently disturbed to abandon his
+quarters and take his music elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>What he longed to do was to take it home and play it to Looey, but that
+was out of the question: he remembered the watch. But there was Jerry's
+Gullen's canary, and him Dicky sought and found. Canary blinked solemnly
+when the resplendent box was flashed in his eyes, and set his ears back
+and forward as, muffled again in Dicky's jacket, it tinkled out its
+tune.</p>
+
+<p>Tommy Rann should not see it, lest he prevail over its beneficent
+dedication to the Ropers. Truly, as it was, Dicky's resolution was hard
+to abide by. The thing acquired at such a cost of patience, address,
+hard flight, and deadly fear was surely his by right&mdash;as surely, quite,
+as the clock had been. And such a thing he might never touch again. But
+he put by the temptation manfully, and came out by Jerry Gullen's front
+door. He would look no more on the music box, beautiful as it was: he
+would convey it to the Ropers before temptation came again.</p>
+
+<p>It was not easy to devise likely means. Their door was shut fast, of
+course. For a little while he favoured the plan of setting the box
+against the threshold, knocking, and running off. But an opportunity
+might arise of doing the thing in a way to give him some glimpse of the
+Ropers' delight, an indulgence he felt entitled to. So he waited a
+little, listened a little, and at last came out into the street, and
+loafed.</p>
+
+<p>It was near six o'clock, and a smell of bloater hung about Jerry
+Gullen's door and window; under the raised sash Jerry Gullen,
+close-cropped and foxy of face, smoked his pipe, sprawled his elbows,
+and contemplated the world. Dicky, with the music box stowed out of
+sight, looked as blank of design and as destitute of possession as he
+could manage; for there were loafers near Mother Gapp's, loafers at the
+Luck Row corner&mdash;at every corner&mdash;and loafers by the 'Posties,' all
+laggard of limb and alert of eye. He had just seen a child, going with
+an empty beer can, thrown down, robbed of his coppers and a poor old
+top, and kicked away in helpless tears; and the incident was commonplace
+enough, or many would have lacked pocket-money. Whosoever was too young,
+too old, or too weak to fight for it must keep what he had well hidden,
+in the Jago.</p>
+
+<p>Down the street came Billy Leary, big, flushed and limping, and hanging
+to a smaller man by a fistful of his coat on the shoulder. Dicky knew
+the small man for a good toy-getter&mdash;(which = watch stealer)&mdash;and judged
+he had had a good click, the proceeds whereof Billy Leary was battening
+upon in beershops. For Billy Leary rarely condescended to anything less
+honourable than bashing, and had not yet fallen so low as to go about
+stealing for himself. His missis brought many to the cosh, and his chief
+necessity&mdash;another drink&mdash;he merely demanded of the nearest person with
+the money to buy it, on pain of bashing. Or he walked into the nearest
+public-house, selected the fullest pot, and spat in it: a ceremony that
+deprived the purchaser of further interest in the beer, and left it at
+his own disposal. There were others, both Ranns and Learys, who pursued
+a similar way of life; but Billy Leary was biggest among them&mdash;big men
+not being common in the Jago&mdash;and rarely came to a difficulty: as,
+however, he did once come, having invaded the pot of a stranger, who
+turned out to be a Mile End pugilist exploring Shoreditch. It was not
+well for any Jago who had made a click to have Billy Leary know of it;
+for then the clicker was apt to be sought out, clung to, and sucked dry;
+possibly bashed as well, when nothing more was left, if Billy Leary were
+still but sober enough for the work.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky gazed after the man with interest. It was he whom his father was
+to fight in a week or so&mdash;perhaps in a few days: on the first Sunday,
+indeed, that Leary should be deemed fit enough. How much of the limp was
+due to yesterday's disaster and how much to to-day's beer, Dicky could
+not judge. But there seemed little reason to look for a long delay
+before the fight.</p>
+
+<p>As Dicky turned away a man pushed a large truck round the corner from
+Edge Lane, and on the footpath beside it walked the parson, calm as
+ever, with black clothes and tall hat, whole and unsoiled. He had made
+himself known in the Jago in the course of that afternoon. He had
+traversed it from end to end, street by street and alley by alley. His
+self-possession, his readiness, his unbending firmness, abashed and
+perplexed the Jagos, and his appearance just as the police had left
+could but convince them that he must have some mysterious and potent
+connection with the force. He had attempted very little in the way of
+domiciliary visiting, being content for the time to see his parish, and
+speak here a word and there another with his parishioners. An encounter
+with Kiddo Cook did as much as anything toward securing him a proper
+deference. In his second walk through Old Jago Street, as he neared the
+Feathers, he was aware of a bunch of grinning faces pressed against the
+bar window, and as he came abreast, forth stepped Kiddo Cook from the
+door, impudently affable, smirking and ducking with mock obsequiousness,
+and offering a quart pot.</p>
+
+<p>'An' 'ow jer find jerself, sir?' he asked, with pantomime cordiality.
+'Hof'ly shockin' these 'ere lower classes, ain't they? Er&mdash;yus;
+disgustin', weally. Er&mdash;might I&mdash;er&mdash;prepose&mdash;er&mdash;a little refreshment?
+Ellow me.'</p>
+
+<p>The parson, grimly impassive, heard him through, took the pot, and
+instantly jerking it upward, shot the beer, a single splash, into
+Kiddo's face. 'There are things I must teach you, I see, my man,' he
+said, without moving a muscle, except to return the pot.</p>
+
+<p>Kiddo Cook, coughing, drenched and confounded, took the pot
+instinctively and backed to Mother Gapp's door, while the bunch of faces
+at the bar window tossed and rolled in a joyous ecstasy: the ghost
+whereof presently struggled painfully among Kiddo's own dripping
+features, as he realised the completeness of his defeat, and the
+expedience of a patient grin. The parson went calmly on.</p>
+
+<p>Before this, indeed when he left the Ropers' room, and just after Dicky
+had started out, he had looked in at the Perrotts' quarters to speak
+about the clock. But plainly no clock was there, and Mrs Perrott's
+flaccid indignation at the suggestion, and her unmistakable ignorance of
+the affair, decided him to carry the matter no further, at any rate for
+the present. Moreover, the little hunchback's tale was inconclusive. He
+had seen no clock in Dicky's possession&mdash;had but met him on the stairs
+with a bulging jacket. The thing might be suspicious, but the new parson
+knew better than to peril his influence by charging where he could not
+convict. So he duly commiserated Hannah Perrott's troubles, suggested
+that the baby seemed unwell and had better be taken to a doctor, and
+went his way about the Jago.</p>
+
+<p>Now he stopped the truck by Dicky's front door and mounted to the
+Ropers' room. For he had seen that the Jago was no place for them now,
+and had himself found them a suitable room away by Dove Lane. And so,
+emboldened by his company, the Ropers came forth, and with the help of
+the man who had brought the truck, carried down the pieces of their
+bedstead, a bundle of bedding, the two chairs, the pink vases, and the
+strip of old carpet, and piled them on the truck with the few more
+things that were theirs.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky, with his hand on the music box in the lining of his jacket,
+sauntered up by the tail of the truck, and, waiting his chance, plunged
+his gift under the bundle of bedding, and left it there. But the little
+hunchback's sharp eyes were jealously on him, and 'Look there!' he
+squealed, ''e put 'is 'and in the truck an' took somethink!'</p>
+
+<p>'Ye lie!' answered Dicky, indignant and hurt, but cautiously backing
+off; 'I ain't got nothink.' He spread his hands and opened his jacket in
+proof. 'Think I got yer bloomin' bedstead?'</p>
+
+<p>He had nothing, it was plain. In fact, at the tail of the truck there
+was nothing he could easily have moved at all, certainly nothing he
+could have concealed. So the rest of the little removal was hurried, for
+heads were now at windows, the loafers began to draw about the truck,
+and trouble might break out at any moment: indeed, the Ropers could
+never have ventured from their room but for the general uneasy awe of
+the parson. For nothing was so dangerous in the Jago as to impugn its
+honesty. To rob another was reasonable and legitimate, and to avoid
+being robbed, so far as might be, was natural and proper. But to accuse
+anybody of a theft was unsportsmanlike, a foul outrage, a shameful
+abuse, a thing unpardonable. You might rob a man, bash a man, even kill
+a man; but to 'take away his character'&mdash;even when he had none&mdash;was to
+draw down the execrations of the whole Jago; while to assail the pure
+fame of the place&mdash;to 'give the street a bad name'&mdash;this was to bring
+the Jago howling and bashing about your ears.</p>
+
+<p>The truck moved off at last, amid murmurings, mutterings, and grunts
+from the onlookers. The man of the truck pulled, Roper shoved behind,
+and his wife, with her threadbare decency and her meagre, bruised face,
+carried the baby, while the hunchbacked boy went by her side. All this
+under convoy of the Reverend Henry Sturt.</p>
+
+<p>A little distance gave more confidence to a few, and, when the group had
+reached within a score of yards of Edge Lane, there came a hoot or two,
+a 'Yah!' and other less spellable sounds, expressive of contempt and
+defiance. Roper glanced back nervously, but the rest held on their way
+regardless. Then came a brickbat, which missed the woman by very little
+and struck the truck wheel. At this the parson stopped and turned on his
+heel, and Cocko Harnwell, the flinger, drove his hands into his breeches
+pockets and affected an interest in Mother Gapp's window; till,
+perceiving the parson's eyes directed sternly upon him, and the parson's
+stick rising to point at him, he ingloriously turned tail and scuttled
+into Jago Court.</p>
+
+<p>And so the Ropers left the Jago. Dove Lane was but a stone's-throw ahead
+when some of the load shifted, and the truck was stopped to set the
+matter right. The chest was pushed back, and the bedding was lifted to
+put against it, and so the musical box came to light. Roper picked it up
+and held it before the vicar's eyes. 'Look at that, sir,' he said.
+'You'll witness I know nothing of it, won't you? It ain't mine, an' I
+never saw it before. It's bin put in for spite to put a theft on us.
+When they come for it you'll bear me out, sir, won't you? That was the
+Perrott boy as was put up to do that, I'll be bound. When he was behind
+the truck.'</p>
+
+<p>But nobody came for Dicky's gift, and in the Jago twilight Dicky vainly
+struggled to whistle the half-remembered tune, and to persuade himself
+that he was not sorry that the box was gone.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Josh Perrott reached home late for tea but in good humour. He had spent
+most of the day at the Bag of Nails, dancing attendance on the High
+Mobsmen. Those of the High Mob were the flourishing practitioners in
+burglary, the mag, the mace, and the broads, with an outer fringe of
+such dippers&mdash;such pick-pockets&mdash;as could dress well, welshers, and
+snides-men. These, the grandees of rascality, lived in places far from
+the Jago, and some drove in gigs and pony traps. But they found the Bag
+of Nails a convenient and secluded exchange and house of call, and there
+they met, made appointments, designed villainies, and tossed for
+sovereigns: deeply reverenced by the admiring Jagos, among whom no
+ambition flourished but this&mdash;to become also of these resplendent ones.
+It was of these that old Beveridge had spoken one day to Dicky, in
+language the child but half understood. The old man sat on a curb in
+view of the Bag of Nails, and smoked a blackened bit of clay pipe. He
+hauled Dicky to his side, and, pointing with his pipe, said:&mdash;'See that
+man with the furs?'</p>
+
+<p>'What?' Dicky replied. 'Mean 'im in the ice-cream coat, smokin' a cigar?
+Yus.'</p>
+
+<p>'And the other with the brimmy tall hat, and the red face, and the
+umbrella?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yus.'</p>
+
+<p>'What are they?'</p>
+
+<p>''Igh mob. 'Ooks. Toffs.'</p>
+
+<p>'Right. Now, Dicky Perrott, you Jago whelp, look at them&mdash;look hard.
+Some day, if you're clever&mdash;cleverer than anyone in the Jago now&mdash;if
+you're only scoundrel enough, and brazen enough, and lucky enough&mdash;one
+of a thousand&mdash;maybe you'll be like them: bursting with high living,
+drunk when you like, red and pimply. There it is&mdash;that's your aim in
+life&mdash;there's your pattern. Learn to read and write, learn all you can,
+learn cunning, spare nobody and stop at nothing, and perhaps&mdash;' he
+waved his hand toward the Bag of Nails. 'It's the best the world has for
+you, for the Jago's got you, and that's the only way out, except gaol
+and the gallows. So do your devilmost, or God help you, Dicky
+Perrott&mdash;though he wont: for the Jago's got you!'</p>
+
+<p>Old Beveridge had eccentric talk and manners, and the Jago regarded him
+as a trifle 'balmy,' though anything but a fool. So that Dicky troubled
+little to sift the meaning of what he said.</p>
+
+<p>Josh Perrott's mission among the High Mob had been to discover some
+Mobsman who might be disposed to back him in the fight with Billy Leary.
+For though a private feud was the first cause of the turn-up, still
+business must never be neglected, and a feud or anything else that could
+produce money must be made to produce it, and when a fight of
+exceptional merit is placed before spectators, it is but fair that they
+should pay for their diversion.</p>
+
+<p>But few High Mobsmen were at the Bag of Nails that day. Sunday was the
+day of the chief gatherings of the High Mob: Sunday the market-day, so
+to speak, of the Jago, when such rent as was due weekly was paid (most
+of the Jago rents were paid daily and nightly) and other accounts were
+settled or fought out. Moreover, the High Mob were perhaps a trifle shy
+of the Jago at the time of a faction fight; and one was but just over,
+and that cut short at a third of the usual span of days. So that Josh
+waited long and touted vainly, till a patron arrived who knew him of
+old; who had employed him, indeed, as 'minder'&mdash;which means a protector
+or a bully, as you please to regard it&mdash;on a racecourse adventure
+involving bodily risk. On this occasion Josh had earned his wages with
+hard knocks given and taken, and his employer had conceived a high and
+thankful opinion of his capacity. Wherefore he listened now to the tale
+of the coming fight, and agreed to provide something in the way of
+stakes, and to put something on for Josh himself: looking for his own
+profit to the bets he might make at favourable odds with his friends.
+For Billy Leary was notorious as being near prime ruffian of the Jago,
+while Josh's reputation was neither so evil nor so wide. And so it was
+settled, and Josh came pleased to his tea; for assuredly Billy Leary
+would have no difficulty in finding another notable of the High Mob to
+cover the stakes.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky was at home, sitting by Looey on the bed; and when he called his
+father it seemed pretty plain to Josh that the baby was out of sorts.
+'She's rum about the eyes,' he said to his wife. 'Blimy if she don't
+look as though she was goin' to squint.'</p>
+
+<p>Josh was never particularly solicitous as to the children, but he saw
+that they were fed and clothed&mdash;perhaps by mere force of the habit of
+his more reputable days of plastering. He had brought home tripe, rolled
+in paper, and stuffed into his coat pocket, to make a supper on the
+strength of the day's stroke of business. When this tripe was boiled, he
+and Dicky essayed to drive morsels into Looey's mouth, and to wash them
+down with beer; but to no end but choking rejection. Whereat Josh
+decided that she must go to the dispensary in the morning. And in the
+morning he took her, with Dicky at his heels; for not only did his wife
+still nurse her neck, but in truth she feared to venture abroad.</p>
+
+<p>The dispensary was no charitable institution, but a shop so labelled in
+Meakin Street, one of half a dozen such kept by a medical man who lived
+away from them, and bothered himself as little about them as was
+consistent with banking the takings and signing the death-certificates.
+A needy young student, whose sole qualification was cheapness, was set
+to do the business of each place, and the uniform price for advice and
+medicine was sixpence. But there was a deal of professional character in
+the blackened and gilt lettered front windows, and the sixpences came by
+hundreds. For hospital letters but rarely came Meakin Street way. Such
+as did were mostly in the hands of tradesmen, who subscribed for the
+purpose of getting them, and gave them to their best customers, as was
+proper and business-like. And so the dispensary flourished, and the
+needy young student grew shifty and callous, and no doubt there were
+occasional faith-cures. Indeed, cures of simple science were not at all
+impossible. For there was always a good supply of two drugs in the
+place&mdash;Turkey rhubarb and sulphuric acid: both very useful, both very
+cheap, and both going very far in varied preparation, properly handled.
+An ounce or two of sulphuric acid, for instance, costing something
+fractional, dilutes with water into many gallons of physic. Excellent
+medicines they made too, and balanced each other very well by reason of
+their opposite effects. But indeed they were not all, for sometimes
+there were two or three other drugs in hand, interfering, perhaps
+troublesomely, with the simple division of therapeutics into the two
+provinces of rhubarb and sulphuric acid.</p>
+
+<p>Business was brisk at the dispensary: several were waiting, and medicine
+and advice were going at the rate of two minutes for sixpence. Looey's
+case was not so clear as most of the others: she could not describe its
+symptoms succinctly, as 'a pain here,' or 'a tight feeling there.' She
+did but lie heavily, staring blankly upward (she did not mind the light
+now), with the little cast in her eyes, and repeat her odd little wail;
+and Dicky and his father could tell very little. The young student had a
+passing thought that he might have known a trifle more of the matter if
+he had had time to turn up Ross on nerve and brain troubles&mdash;were such a
+proceeding consistent with the dignity of the dispensary; but
+straightway assigning the case to the rhubarb province, made up a
+powder, ordered Josh to keep the baby quiet, and pitched his sixpence
+among the others, well within the two minutes.</p>
+
+<p>And faith in the dispensary was strengthened, for indeed Looey seemed a
+little better after the powder; and she was fed with spoonfuls of a
+fluid bought at a chandler's shop, and called milk.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2>
+
+
+<p>'Dicky Perrott, come 'ere,' said Mr Aaron Weech in a voice of sad
+rebuke, a few days later. 'Come 'ere, Dicky Perrott.'</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head solemnly as he stooped. Dicky slouched up.</p>
+
+<p>'What was that you found the other day an' didn't bring to me?'</p>
+
+<p>'Nuffin'.' Dicky withdrew a step.</p>
+
+<p>'It's no good you a-tellin' me that, Dicky Perrott, when I know better.
+You know very well you can't pervent me knowin'.' His little eyes
+searched Dicky's face, and Dicky sulkily shifted his own gaze. 'You're a
+wicked, ungrateful young 'ound, an' I've a good mind to tell a p'liceman
+to find out where you got that clock. Come 'ere now&mdash;don't you try
+runnin' away. Wot! after me a-takin' you in when you was 'ungry, an'
+givin' you cawfy an' cake, an' good advice like a father, an' a bloater
+an' all, an' you owin' me thrippence a'peny besides, then you goes
+an'&mdash;an' takes yer findin's somewhere else!'</p>
+
+<p>'I never!' protested Dicky stoutly. But Mr Weech's cunning, equal to a
+shrewd guess that since his last visit Dicky had probably had another
+'find,' and quick to detect a lie, was slack to perceive a truth.</p>
+
+<p>'Now don't you go an' add on a wicked lie to yer sinful ungratefulness,
+wotever you do,' he said, severely. 'That's wuss, an' I alwis know.
+Doncher know the little 'ymn?&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">An' 'im as does one fault at fust<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An' lies to 'ide it, makes it two.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It's bad enough to be ungrateful to me as is bin so kind to you, an'
+it's wuss to break the fust commandment. If the bloater don't inflooence
+you, the 'oly 'ymn ought. 'Ow would you like me to go an' ask yer father
+for that thrippence a'peny you owe me? That's wot I'll 'ave to do if you
+don't mind.'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky would not have liked it at all, as his frightened face testified.</p>
+
+<p>'Then find somethink an' pay it at once, an' then I won't. I won't be
+'ard on you, if you'll be a good boy. But don't git playin' no more
+tricks&mdash;'cos I'll know all about 'em. Now go an' find somethink quick.'
+And Dicky went.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Ten days after his first tour of the Old Jago, the Reverend Henry Sturt
+first preached in the parish church made of a stable, in an alley behind
+Meakin Street, but few yards away, though beyond sight and sound of the
+Jago. There, that Sunday morning was a morning of importance, a time of
+excitement, for the fight between Billy Leary and Josh Perrott was to
+come off in Jago Court. The assurance that there was money in the thing
+was a sovereign liniment for Billy Leary's bruises&mdash;for they were but
+bruises&mdash;and he hastened to come by that money, lest it melt by caprice
+of the backers, or the backers themselves fall at unlucky odds with the
+police. He made little of Josh Perrott, his hardness and known fighting
+power notwithstanding. For was there not full a stone and a half between
+their weights? and had Billy not four or five inches the better in
+height and a commensurate advantage in reach? And Billy Leary's own
+hardness and fighting power were well proved enough.</p>
+
+<p>It was past eleven o'clock. The weekly rents&mdash;for the week
+forthcoming&mdash;had been extracted, or partly extracted, or scuffled over.
+Old Poll Rann, who had made money in sixty-five years of stall-farming
+and iniquity, had made the rounds of the six houses she rented, to turn
+out the tenants of the night who were disposed to linger. Many had
+already stripped themselves to their rags at pitch-and-toss in Jago
+Court; and the game still went busily on in the crowded area and in
+overflow groups in Old Jago Street; and men found themselves deprived,
+not merely of the money for that day's food and that night's lodging,
+but even of the last few pence set by to back a horse for Tuesday's
+race. A little-regarded fight or two went on here and there as usual,
+and on kerbs and doorsteps sat women, hideous at all ages, filling the
+air with the rhetoric of the Jago.</p>
+
+<p>Presently down from Edge Lane and the 'Posties' came the High Mobsmen,
+swaggering in check suits and billycocks, gold chains and lumpy rings:
+stared at, envied, and here and there pointed out by name or exploit.
+'Him as done the sparks in from Regent Street for nine centuries o'
+quids'; 'Him as done five stretch for a snide bank bill an' they never
+found the oof'; 'Him as maced the bookies in France an' shot the nark in
+the boat'; and so forth. And the High Mob being come, the fight was due.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, a fight merely as a fight was no great matter of interest:
+the thing was too common. But there was money on this; and again, it was
+no common thing to find Billy Leary defied, still less to find him
+challenged. Moreover, the thing had a Rann and Leary complexion, and it
+arose out of the battle of less than a fortnight back. So that Josh
+Perrott did not lack for partisans, though not a Rann believed he could
+stand long before Billy Leary Billy's cause, too, had lost some
+popularity because it had been reported that Sally Green, in hospital,
+had talked of 'summonsing' Norah Walsh in the matter of her mangled
+face: a scandalous device to overreach, a piece of foul practice
+repugnant to all proper feeling; more especially for such a
+distinguished Jago as Sally Green&mdash;so well able to take care of herself.
+But all this was nothing as affecting the odds. They ruled at three to
+one on Billy Leary, with few takers, and went to four to one before the
+fight began.</p>
+
+<p>Josh Perrott had been strictly sober for a full week. And the family had
+lived better, for he had brought meat home each day. Now he sat
+indifferently at the window of his room, and looked out at the crowd in
+Jago Court till such time as he might be wanted. He had not been out of
+the room that morning: he was saving his energy for Billy Leary.</p>
+
+<p>As for Dicky, he had scarce slept for excitement. For days he had
+enjoyed consideration among his fellows on account of this fight. Now he
+shook and quivered, and nothing relieved his agitation but violent
+exertion. So he rushed downstairs a hundred times to see if the High Mob
+were coming, and back to report that they were not. At last he saw their
+overbearing checks, and tore upstairs, face before knees, with ''Ere
+they are, father! 'Ere they are! They're comin' down the street,
+father!' and danced frenzied about the room and the landing.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Jerry Gullen and Kiddo Cook came, as seconds, to take Josh
+out, and then Dicky quieted a little externally, though he was bursting
+at the chest and throat, and his chin jolted his teeth together
+uncontrollably. Josh dragged off his spotted coat and waistcoat and
+flung them on the bed, and then was helped out of his ill-mended blue
+shirt. He gave a hitch to his trousers-band, tightened his belt, and was
+ready.</p>
+
+<p>'Ta-ta, ol' gal,' he said to his wife, with a grin; 'back agin soon.'</p>
+
+<p>'With a bob or two for ye,' added Kiddo Cook, grinning likewise.</p>
+
+<p>Hannah Perrott sat pale and wistful, with the baby on her knees.
+Through the morning she had sat so, wretched and helpless,
+sometimes putting her face in her hands, sometimes breaking out
+hopelessly:&mdash;'Don't, Josh, don't&mdash;good Gawd, Josh, I wish you wouldn't!'
+or 'Josh, Josh, I wish I was dead!' Josh had fought before, it was true,
+and more than once, but then she had learned of the matter afterward.
+This preparation and long waiting were another thing. Once she had even
+exclaimed that she would go with him&mdash;though she meant nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as Josh went out at the door, she bent over Looey and hid her face
+again. 'Good luck, father,' called Dicky, 'go it!' Though the words
+would hardly pass his throat, and he struggled to believe that he had no
+fear for his father.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner was the door shut than he rushed to the window, though Josh
+could not appear in Jago Court for three or four minutes yet. The
+sash-line was broken, and the window had been propped open with a stick.
+In his excitement Dicky dislodged the stick, and the sash came down on
+his head, but he scarce felt the blow, and readjusted the stick with
+trembling hands, regardless of the bruise rising under his hair.</p>
+
+<p>'Aincher goin' to look, mother?' he asked. 'Wontcher 'old up Looey?'</p>
+
+<p>But his mother would not look. As for Looey, she looked at nothing. She
+had been taken to the dispensary once again, and now lay drowsy and
+dull, with little more movement than a general shudder and a twitching
+of the face at long intervals. The little face itself was thinner and
+older than ever: horribly flea-bitten still, but bloodlessly pale. Mrs
+Perrott had begun to think Looey was ailing for something; thought it
+might be measles or whooping-cough coming, and complained that children
+were a continual worry.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky hung head and shoulders out of the window, clinging to the broken
+sill and scraping feverishly at the wall with his toes. Jago Court was
+fuller than ever. The tossing went on, though now with more haste, that
+most might be made of the remaining time. A scuffle still persisted in
+one corner. Some stood to gaze at the High Mob, who, to the number of
+eight or ten, stood in an exalted group over against the back fences of
+New Jago Street; but the thickest knot was about Cocko Harnwell's
+doorstep, whereon sat Billy Leary, his head just visible through the
+press about him, waiting to keep his appointment.</p>
+
+<p>Then a close group appeared at the archway, and pushed into the crowd,
+which made way at its touch, the disturbed tossers pocketing their
+coppers, but the others busily persisting, with no more than a glance
+aside between the spins. Josh Perrott's cropped head and bare shoulders
+marked the centre of the group, and as it came, another group moved out
+from Cocko Harnwell's doorstep, with Billy Leary's tall bulk shining
+pink and hairy in its midst.</p>
+
+<p>''E's in the court, mother,' called Dicky, scraping faster with his
+toes.</p>
+
+<p>The High Mobsmen moved up toward the middle of the court, and some from
+the two groups spread and pushed back the crowd. Still half a dozen
+couples, remote by the walls, tossed and tossed faster than ever, moving
+this way and that as the crowd pressed.</p>
+
+<p>Now there was an irregular space of bare cobble stones and house refuse,
+five or six yards across, in the middle of Jago Court, and all round it
+the shouting crowd was packed tight, those at the back standing on sills
+and hanging to fences. Every window was a clump of heads, and women
+yelled savagely or cheerily down and across. The two groups were merged
+in the press at each side of the space, Billy Leary and Josh Perrott in
+front of each, with his seconds.</p>
+
+<p>'Naa then, any more 'fore they begin?' bawled a High Mobsman, turning
+about among his fellows. 'Three to one on the big 'un&mdash;three to one!
+'Ere, I'll give fours&mdash;four to one on Leary! Fourer one! Fourer one!'</p>
+
+<p>But they shook their heads; they would wait a little. Leary and Perrott
+stepped out. The last of the tossers stuffed away his coppers, and
+sought for a hold on the fence.</p>
+
+<p>'They're a-sparrin', mother!' cried Dicky, pale and staring, elbows and
+legs a-work, till he was like to pitch out of window. From his mother
+there but jerked a whimpering sob, which he did not hear.</p>
+
+<p>The sparring was not long. There was little of subtlety in the milling
+of the Jago: mostly no more than a rough application of the main hits
+and guards, with much rushing and ruffianing. What there was of
+condition in the two men was Josh's: smaller and shorter, he had a
+certain hard brownness of hide that Leary, in his heavy opulence of
+flesh, lacked; and there was a horny quality in his face and hands that
+reminded the company of his boast of invulnerability to anything milder
+than steel. Also his breadth of chest was great. Nevertheless all odds
+seemed against him, by reason of Billy Leary's size, reach, and fighting
+record.</p>
+
+<p>The men rushed together, and Josh was forced back by weight. Leary's
+great fists, left and right, shot into his face with smacking reports,
+but left no mark on the leathery skin, and Josh, fighting for the body,
+drove his knuckles into the other's ribs with a force that jerked a
+thick grunt from Billy's lips at each blow.</p>
+
+<p>There was a roar of shouts. 'Go it, father! Fa&mdash;ther! Fa&mdash;ther!' Dicky
+screamed from the window, till his voice broke in his throat and he
+coughed himself livid. The men were at holds, and swaying this way and
+that over the uneven stones. Blood ran copiously from Billy Leary's nose
+over his mouth and chin, and, as they turned, Dicky saw his father spit
+away a tooth over Leary's shoulder. They clipped and hauled to and fro,
+each striving to break the other's foothold. Then Perrott stumbled at a
+hole, lost his feet, and went down, with Leary on top.</p>
+
+<p>Cheers and yells rent the air, as each man was taken to his own side by
+his seconds. Dicky let go the sill and turned to his mother, wild of
+eye, breathless with broken chatter.</p>
+
+<p>'Father 'it 'im on the nose, mother, like that&mdash;'is ribs is goin' black
+where father pasted 'em&mdash;'e was out o' breath fust&mdash;there' blood all
+over 'is face, mother&mdash;father would 'a' chucked 'im over if 'e 'adn't
+tumbled in a 'ole&mdash;father 'it 'im twice on the jore&mdash;'e&mdash;O!'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky was back again on the sill, kicking and shouting, for time was
+called, and the two men rushed again into a tangled knot. But the close
+strife was short. Josh had but closed to spoil his man's wind, and,
+leaving his head to take care of itself, stayed till he had driven left
+and right on the mark, and then got back. Leary came after him, gasping
+and blowing already, and Josh feinted a lead and avoided, bringing Leary
+round on his heel and off again in chase. Once more Josh met him, drove
+at his ribs, and got away out of reach. Leary's wind was going fast, and
+his partisans howled savagely at Josh&mdash;perceiving his tactics&mdash;taunting
+him with running away, daring him to stand and fight. 'I'll take that
+four to one,' called a High Mobsman to him who had offered the odds in
+the beginning. 'I'll stand a quid on Perrott!'</p>
+
+<p>'Not with me you won't,' the other answered. 'Evens, if you like.'</p>
+
+<p>'Right. Done at evens, a quid.'</p>
+
+<p>Perrott, stung at length by the shouts from Leary's corner, turned on
+Billy and met him at full dash. He was himself puffing by this, though
+much less than his adversary, and, at the cost of a heavy blow (which he
+took on his forehead), he visited Billy's ribs once more.</p>
+
+<p>Both men were grunting and gasping now, and the sound of blows was as of
+the confused beating of carpets. Dicky, who had been afflicted to
+heart-burst by his father's dodging and running, which he mistook for
+simple flight, now broke into excited speech once more:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Father's 'it 'im on the jore ag'in&mdash;'is eye's a-bungin' up&mdash;<i>Go it,
+father, bash 'i-i-i-m!</i> Father's landin' 'im&mdash;'e&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Hannah Perrott crept to the window and looked. She saw the foul Jago
+mob, swaying and bellowing about the shifting edge of an open patch, in
+the midst whereof her husband and Billy Leary, bruised, bloody and
+gasping, fought and battered infuriately; and she crept back to the bed
+and bent her face on Looey's unclean little frock; till a fit of tense
+shuddering took the child, and the mother looked up again.</p>
+
+<p>Without, the round ended. For a full minute the men took and gave knock
+for knock, and then Leary, wincing from another body-blow, swung his
+right desperately on Perrott's ear, and knocked him over.</p>
+
+<p>Exulting shouts rose from the Leary faction, and the blow struck Dicky's
+heart still. But Josh was up almost before Kiddo Cook reached him, and
+Dicky saw a wide grin on his face as he came to his corner. The leathery
+toughness of the man, and the advantage it gave him, now grew apparent.
+He had endured to the full as much and as hard punching as had his
+foe&mdash;even more, and harder; once he had fallen on the broken
+cobble-stones with all Leary's weight on him; and once he had been
+knocked down on them. But, except for the sweat that ran over his face
+and down his back, and for a missing front tooth and the lip it had cut,
+he showed little sign of the struggle; while Leary's left eye was a mere
+slit in a black wen, his nose was a beaten mass, which had ensanguined
+him (and indeed Josh) from crown to waist, and his chest and flanks were
+a mottle of bruises.</p>
+
+<p>'Father's awright, mother&mdash;I see 'im laughin'! And 'e's smashed Leary's
+nose all over 'is face!'</p>
+
+<p>Up again they sprang for the next round, Perrott active and daring,
+Leary cautious and a trifle stiff. Josh rushed in and struck at the
+tender ribs once more, took two blows callously on his head, and sent
+his left at the nose, with a smack as of a flail on water. With that
+Leary rushed like a bull, and Josh was driven and battered back, for the
+moment without response. But he ducked, and slipped away, and came
+again, fresh and vicious. And now it was seen that Perrott's toughness
+of hand was lasting. Leary's knuckles were raw, cut, and flayed, and
+took little good by the shock when they met the other's stubborn muzzle;
+while Josh still flung in his corneous fists, hard and lasting as a bag
+of bullets.</p>
+
+<p>But suddenly, stooping to reach the mark once more, Josh's foot turned
+on a projecting stone, and he floundered forward into Billy's arms.
+Like a flash his neck was clipped in the big man's left arm: Josh
+Perrott was in chancery. Quick and hard Leary pounded the imprisoned
+head, while Jerry Gullen and Kiddo Cook danced distracted and dismayed,
+and the crowd whooped and yelled.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky hung delirious over the sill, and shrieked he knew not what. He
+saw his father fighting hard at the back and ribs with both hands, and
+Leary hammering his face in a way to make pulp of an ordinary mazzard.
+Then suddenly Josh Perrott's right hand shot up from behind, over
+Leary's shoulder, and gripped him at the chin. Slowly, with tightened
+muscles, he forced his man back over his bent knee, Leary clinging and
+swaying, but impotent to struggle. Then, with an extra wrench from Josh,
+up came Leary's feet from the ground, higher, higher, till suddenly Josh
+flung him heavily over, heels up, and dropped on him with all his
+weight.</p>
+
+<p>The Ranns roared again. Josh was up in a moment, sitting on Kiddo Cook's
+knee, and taking a drink from a bottle. Billy Leary lay like a man
+fallen from a house-top. His seconds turned him on his back, and dragged
+him to his corner. There he lay limp and senseless, and there was a cut
+at the back of his head.</p>
+
+<p>The High Mobsman who held the watch waited for half a minute and then
+called 'Time!' Josh Perrott stood up, but Billy Leary was knocked out of
+knowledge, and heard not. He was beaten.</p>
+
+<p>Josh Perrott was involved in a howling, dancing crowd, and was pushed,
+grinning, this way and that, slapped on the back, and offered drinks. In
+the outskirts the tossers, inveterate, pulled out their pence and
+resumed their game.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky spun about, laughing, flushed, and elated, and as soon as the door
+was distinct to his dazzled sight, he ran off downstairs. His mother,
+relieved and even pleased, speculated as to what money the thing might
+bring. She put the baby on the bed, and looked from the window.</p>
+
+<p>Josh, in the crowd, shouted and beckoned her, pointing and tapping his
+bare shoulder. He wanted his clothes. She gathered together the shirt,
+the coat, and the waistcoat, and hurried downstairs. Looey could come to
+no harm lying on the bed for a few minutes. And, indeed, Hannah Perrott
+felt that she would be a person of distinction in the crowd, and was not
+sorry to have an excuse for going out.</p>
+
+<p>'Three cheers for the missis!' sang out Kiddo Cook as she came through
+the press. 'I said 'e'd 'ave a bob or two for you, didn't I?' Josh
+Perrott, indeed, was rich&mdash;a capitalist of five pounds. For a sovereign
+a side had been put up, and his backer had put on a sovereign for him at
+three to one. So that now it became him to stand beer to many
+sympathisers. Also, he felt that the missis should have some part in the
+celebration, for was it not her injury that he had avenged on Sally
+Green's brother? So Hannah Perrott, pleased though timorous, was hauled
+away with the rest to Mother Gapp's.</p>
+
+<p>Here she sat by Josh's side for an hour. Once or twice she thought of
+Looey, but with native inertness she let the thought slip. Perhaps
+Dicky would be back, and at any rate it was hard if she must not take
+half an hour's relaxation once in a way. At last came Dicky, urgent
+perplexity in his face, looking in at the door. Josh, minded to be
+generous all round, felt for a penny.</p>
+
+<p>'Mother,' said Dicky, plucking at her arm, 'Pigeony Poll's at 'ome,
+nussin' Looey; she told me to tell you to come at once.'</p>
+
+<p>Pigeony Poll? What right had she in the room? The ghost of Hannah
+Perrott's respectability rose in resentment. She supposed she must go.
+She arose, mystified, and went, with Dicky at her skirts.</p>
+
+<p>Pigeony Poll sat by the window with the baby in her arms, and pale
+misgiving in her dull face. 'I&mdash;I come in, Mrs Perrott, mum,' she said,
+with a hush in her thick voice, 'I come in 'cos I see you goin' out, an'
+I thought the baby'd be alone. She&mdash;she's 'ad a sort o' fit&mdash;all stiff
+an' blue in the face and grindin' 'er little mouth. She's left auf
+now&mdash;but I&mdash;I dunno what to make of 'er. She's so&mdash;so&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Hannah Perrott stared blankly, and lifted the child, whose arm dropped
+and hung. The wizen age had gone from Looey's face, and the lids were
+down on the strained eyes; her pale lips lay eased of the old
+pinching&mdash;even parted in a smile. For she looked in the face of the
+Angel that plays with the dead children.</p>
+
+<p>Hannah Perrott's chin fell. 'Lor',' she said bemusedly, and sat on the
+bed.</p>
+
+<p>An odd croaking noise broke in jerks from Pigeony Poll as she crept from
+the room, with her face bowed in the bend of her arm, like a weeping
+schoolboy. Dicky stared, confounded.... Josh came and gazed stupidly,
+with his mouth open, walking tip-toe. But at a word from Kiddo Cook, who
+came in his tracks, he snatched the little body and clattered off to the
+dispensary, to knock up the young student.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The rumour went in the Jago that Josh Perrott was in double luck. For
+here was insurance money without a doubt. But in truth that was a thing
+the Perrotts had neglected.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Hannah Perrott felt a listless relief; Josh felt nothing in particular,
+except that there was no other thing to be done, and that Mother Gapp's
+would be a cheerful place to finish the day in, and keep up the missis's
+pecker.</p>
+
+<p>So that eight o'clock that evening at Perrotts' witnessed a darkening
+room wherein an inconsiderable little corpse lay on a bed; while a small
+ragamuffin spread upon it with outstretched arms, exhausted with
+sobbing, a soak of muddy tears:&mdash;'O Looey, Looey! Can't you 'ear? Won't
+you never come to me no more?'</p>
+
+<p>And the Reverend Henry Sturt, walking from church through Luck Row
+toward his lodgings in Kingsland Road, heard shouts and riot behind the
+grimy panes of Mother Gapp's, and in the midst the roar of many voices
+joined in the Jago chant:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>Six bloomin' long months in a prison, Six more bloomin' months I must
+stay, For meetin' a bloke in our alley, An' takin' 'is uxter away!</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Toora-li&mdash;toora-li&mdash;looral, Toora-li&mdash;toora-li&mdash;lay, A-coshin' a bloke
+in our alley, An' takin' 'is uxter away!</i></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>On an autumn day four years after his first coming to the Jago, the
+Reverend Henry Sturt left a solicitor's office in Cheapside, and walked
+eastward, with something more of hope and triumph in him than he had
+felt since the Jago fell to his charge. For the ground was bought
+whereon should be built a church and buildings accessory, and he felt,
+not that he was like to see any great result from his struggle, but that
+perhaps he might pursue it better armed and with less of grim despair
+than had been his portion hitherto.</p>
+
+<p>It had taken him four years to gather the money for the site, and some
+of it he was paying from his own pocket. He was unmarried, and had
+therefore no reason to save. Still, he must be careful, for the sake of
+the parish: the church must be built, and some of the money would
+probably be wanted for that. Moreover, there were other calls. The
+benefice brought a trifle less than £200 a year, and out of that, so far
+as it would go, he paid (with some small outside help) £130 for rent of
+the temporary church and the adjacent rooms; the organist's salary; the
+rates and the gas-bills; the cost of cleaning, care, and repair; the
+sums needed for such relief as was impossible to be withheld; and a
+thousand small things beside. While the Jagos speculated wildly among
+themselves as to the vast sums he must make by his job. For what toff
+would come and live in the Jago except for a consideration of solid
+gain? What other possible motive could there be, indeed?</p>
+
+<p>Still, he had an influence among them such as they had never known
+before. For one thing, they feared in him what they took for a sort of
+supernatural insight. The mean cunning of the Jago, subtle as it was,
+and baffling to most strangers, foundered miserably before his
+relentless intelligence; and crafty rogues&mdash;'wide as Broad Street,' as
+their proverb went&mdash;at first sulked, faltered and prevaricated
+transparently, but soon gave up all hope or effort to deceive him. Thus
+he was respected. Once he had made it plain that he was no common
+milch-cow in the matter of gratuities: to be bamboozled for shillings,
+cajoled for coals, and bullied for blankets: then there became apparent
+in him qualities of charity and lovingkindness, well-judged and
+governed, that awoke in places a regard that was in a way akin to
+affection. And the familiar habit of the Jago slowly grew to call him
+Father Sturt.</p>
+
+<p>Father Sturt was not to be overreached: that was the axiom gloomily
+accepted by all in the Jago who lived by what they accounted their wits.
+You could not juggle shillings and clothing (convertible into shillings)
+out of Father Sturt by the easy fee-faw-fum of repentance and salvation
+that served with so many. There were many of the Jagos (mightily
+despised by some of the sturdier ruffians) who sallied forth from time
+to time into neighbouring regions in pursuit of the profitable
+sentimentalist: discovering him&mdash;black-coated, earnest, green&mdash;sometimes
+a preacher, sometimes a layman, sometimes one having authority on the
+committee of a charitable institution; dabbling in the East End on his
+own account, or administering relief for a mission, or disbursing a
+Mansion House Fund. He was of two chief kinds: the Merely-Soft,&mdash;the
+'man of wool' as the Jago word went,&mdash;for whom any tale was good enough,
+delivered with the proper wistful misery: and the Gullible-Cocksure,
+confident in a blind experience, who was quite as easy to tap, when
+approached with a becoming circumspection. A rough and ready method,
+which served well in most cases with both sorts, was a profession of
+sudden religious awakening. For this, one offered an aspect either of
+serene happiness or of maniacal exaltation, according to the customer's
+taste. A better way, but one demanding greater subtlety, was the
+assumption of the part of Earnest Inquirer, hesitating on the brink of
+Salvation. For the attitude was capable of indefinite prolongation, and
+was ever productive of the boots, the coats, and the half-crowns used to
+coax weak brethren into the fold. But with Father Sturt, such trouble
+was worse than useless; it was, indeed, but to invite a humiliating
+snub. Thus, when Fluffy Pike first came to Father Sturt with the
+intelligence that he had at last found Grace, the Father Sturt asked if
+he had found it in a certain hamper&mdash;a hamper hooked that morning from a
+railway van&mdash;and if it were of a quality likely to inspire an act of
+restoration to the goods office. Nothing was to be done with a man of
+this disgustingly practical turn of mind, and the Jagos soon ceased from
+trying.</p>
+
+<p>Father Sturt had made more of the stable than the make-shift church he
+had found. He had organised a club in a stable adjoining, and he lived
+in the rooms over the shut-up shop. In the club he gathered the men of
+the Jago indiscriminately, with the sole condition of good behaviour on
+the premises. And there they smoked, jumped, swung on horizontal bars,
+boxed, played at cards and bagatelle, free from interference save when
+interference became necessary. For the women there were sewing-meetings
+and singing. And all governed with an invisible discipline, which, being
+brought to action, was found to be of iron.</p>
+
+<p>Now there was ground on which might be built a worthier church; and
+Father Sturt had in mind a church which should have by its side a
+cleanly lodging-house, a night-shelter, a club, baths and washhouses.
+And at a stroke he would establish this habitation and wipe out the
+blackest spot in the Jago. For the new site comprised the whole of Jago
+Court and the houses that masked it in Old Jago Street.</p>
+
+<p>This was a dream of the future&mdash;perhaps of the immediate future, if a
+certain new millionaire could only be interested in the undertaking&mdash;but
+of the future certainly. The money for the site alone had been hard
+enough to gather. In the first place the East London Elevation Mission
+and Pansophical Institute was asking very diligently for funds&mdash;and was
+getting them. It was to that, indeed, that people turned by habit when
+minded to invest in the amelioration of the East End. Then about this
+time there had arisen a sudden quacksalver, a Panjandrum of
+philanthropy, a mummer of the market-place, who undertook, for a fixed
+sum, to abolish poverty and sin together; and many, pleased with the new
+gaudery, poured out before him the money that had gone to maintain
+hospitals and to feed proved charities. So that gifts were scarce and
+hard to come by&mdash;indeed, were apt to be thought unnecessary, for was not
+misery to be destroyed out of hand? Moreover, Father Sturt wanted not
+for enemies among the Sentimental-Cocksure. He was callous and cynical
+in face of the succulent penitence of Fluffy Pike and his kind. He
+preferred the frank rogue before the calculating snivelmonger. He had a
+club at which boxing was allowed, and dominoes&mdash;flat ungodliness. He
+shook hands familiarly every day with the lowest characters: his tastes
+were vulgar and brutal. And the company at his club was really dreadful.
+These things the Cocksure said, with shaking of heads; and these they
+took care should be known among such as might give Father Sturt money.
+Father Sturt!&mdash;the name itself was sheer papistry. And many comforted
+themselves by writing him anonymous letters, displaying hell before his
+eyes, and dealing him vivid damnation.</p>
+
+<p>So Father Sturt tramped back to the Jago, and to the strain and struggle
+that ceased not for one moment of his life, though it left never a mark
+of success behind it. For the Jago was much as ever. Were the lump once
+leavened by the advent of any denizen a little less base than the rest,
+were a native once ridiculed and persuaded into a spell of work and
+clean living, then must Father Sturt hasten to drive him from the Jago
+ere its influence suck him under for ever; leaving for his own community
+none but the entirely vicious. And among these he spent his life:
+preaching little, in the common sense, for that were but idle vanity in
+this place; but working, alleviating, growing into the Jago life,
+flinging scorn and ridicule on evil things, grateful for tiny negative
+successes&mdash;for keeping a few from ill-behaviour but for an hour;
+conscious that wherever he was not, iniquity flourished unreproved; and
+oppressed by the remembrance that albeit the Jago death-rate ruled full
+four times that of all London beyond, still the Jago rats bred and bred
+their kind unhindered, multiplying apace and infecting the world.</p>
+
+<p>In Luck Row he came on Josh Perrott, making for home with something
+under the skirt of his coat 'How d'ye do, Josh?' said Father Sturt,
+clapping a hand on Josh's shoulder, and offering it as Josh turned
+about.</p>
+
+<p>Josh, with a shifting of the object under his coat, hastened to tap his
+cap-peak with his forefinger before shaking hands. He grinned broadly,
+and looked this way and that, with mingled gratification and
+embarrassment, as was the Jago way in such circumstances. Because one
+could never tell whether Father Sturt would exchange a mere friendly
+sentence or two, or, with concealed knowledge, put some disastrous
+question about a watch, or a purse, or a breast-pin, or what not.</p>
+
+<p>'Very well, thanks, Father,' answered Josh, and grinned amiably at the
+wall beyond the vicar's elbow.</p>
+
+<p>'And what have you been doing just lately?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oo&mdash;odd jobs, Father.' Always the same answer, all over the Jago.</p>
+
+<p>'Not quite such odd jobs as usual, I hope, Josh, eh?' Father Sturt
+smiled, and twitched Josh playfully by the button-hole as one might
+treat a child. 'I once heard of a very odd job in the Kingsland Road
+that got a fine young man six months' holiday. Eh, Josh?'</p>
+
+<p>Josh Perrott wriggled and grinned sheepishly; tried to frown, failed,
+and grinned again. He had only been out a few weeks from that six moon.
+Presently he said:&mdash;'Awright, Father; you do rub it into a bloke, no
+mistake.'</p>
+
+<p>The grin persisted as he looked first at the wall, then at the pavement,
+then down the street, but never in the parson's face.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, there's a deal of good in a blister sometimes, isn't there, Josh?
+What's that I see&mdash;a clock? Not another odd job, eh?'</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed a small nickel-plated American clock which Josh had under
+his coat, and which he now partly uncovered with positive protests. 'No,
+s'elp me, Father, it's all straight&mdash;all fair trade, Father&mdash;jist a swop
+for somethink else, on me solemn davy. That's wot it is,
+Father&mdash;straight.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I'm glad you thought to get it, Josh,' Father Sturt pursued,
+still twitching the button-hole. 'You never have been a punctual
+churchgoer, you know, Josh, and I'm glad you've made arrangements to
+improve. You'll have no excuse now, you know, and I shall expect you on
+Sunday morning&mdash;promptly. Don't forget: I shall be looking for you.' And
+Father Sturt shook hands again, and passed on, leaving Josh Perrott
+still grinning dubiously, and striving to assimilate the invitation to
+church.</p>
+
+<p>The clock was indeed an exchange, though not altogether an innocent one:
+the facts being these. Early that morning Josh had found himself
+scrambling hastily along a turning out of Brick Lane, accompanied by a
+parcel of nine or ten pounds of tobacco, and extremely conscious of the
+hasty scrambling of several other people round the corner. Some of these
+people turned that corner before Josh reached the next, so that his
+course was observed, and it became politic to get rid of his parcel
+before a possible heading-off in Meakin Street. There was one place
+where this might be done, and that was at Weech's. A muddy yard, one of
+a tangle of such places behind Meakin Street, abutted on Weech's
+back-fence; and it was no uncommon thing for a Jago on the crook, hard
+pressed, to pitch his plunder over the fence, double out into the
+crowd, and call on Mr Aaron Weech for the purchase-money as soon as
+opportunity served. The man&oelig;uvre was a simple one, facilitated by the
+plan of the courts; but it was only adopted in extreme cases, because Mr
+Aaron Weech was at best but a mean paymaster, and with so much of the
+upper hand in the bargain as these circumstances conferred, was apt to
+be meaner than ever. But this case seemed to call for the stratagem, and
+Josh made for the muddy yard, dropped the parcel over the fence, with a
+loud whistle, and backed off by the side passage in the regular way.</p>
+
+<p>When he called on Mr Aaron Weech a few hours later, that talented
+tradesman, with liberal gestures, told out shillings singly in his hand,
+pausing after each as though that were the last. But Josh held his hand
+persistently open, till Mr Weech, having released the fifth shilling,
+stopped altogether, scandalised at such rapacity. But still Josh was not
+satisfied, and as he was not quite so easy a customer to manage as the
+boys who commonly fenced at the shop, Mr Weech compromised, in the end,
+by throwing in a cheap clock. It had been in hand for a long time; and
+Josh was fain to take it, since he could get no more. And thus it was
+that Dicky, coming in at about five o'clock, was astonished to see on
+the mantel-piece, amid the greasy ruins of many candle ends, the clock
+that had belonged to the Ropers four years before.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XV" id="XV"></a>XV</h2>
+
+
+<p>As for Dicky, he went to school. That is to say, he turned up now and
+again, at irregular intervals, at the Board School just over the Jago
+border in Honey Lane. When anything was given away, he attended as a
+matter of course; but he went now and again without such
+inducement&mdash;perhaps because he fancied an afternoon's change, perhaps
+because the weather was cold and the school was warm. He was classed as
+a half-timer, an arrangement which variegated the register, but
+otherwise did not matter. Other boys, half-timers or not, attended as
+little as he. It was long since the managers had realised the futility
+of attempting compulsion in the Jago.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky was no fool, and he had picked up some sort of reading and writing
+as he went along. Moreover, he had grown an expert thief, and had taken
+six strokes of a birch-rod by order of a magistrate. As yet he rarely
+attempted a pocket, being, for most opportunities, too small; but he was
+comforted by the reflection that probably he would never get really
+tall, and thus grow out of pocket-picking when he was fully experienced,
+as was the fate of some. For no tall man can be a successful pickpocket,
+because he must bend to his work, and so advertise it to every beholder.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime Dicky practised that petty larceny which is possible in every
+street in London; and at odd times he would play the scout among the
+practitioners of the 'fat's a-running' industry. If one crossed Meakin
+Street by way of Luck Row and kept his way among the courts ahead, he
+presently reached the main Bethnal Green Road, at the end whereof stood
+the great goods depot of a railway company. Here carts and vans went to
+and fro all day, laden with goods from the depot, and certain gangs
+among the Jagos preyed on these continually. A quick-witted scout stood
+on the look-out for such vehicles as went with unguarded tailboards. At
+the approach of one such he sent the shout '<i>Fat's a-runnin'!</i>' up Luck
+Row, and, quick at the signal, a gang scuttled down, by the court or
+passage which his waved hand might hint at, seized whatever could be
+snatched from the cart, and melted away into the courts, sometimes
+leaving a few hands behind to hinder and misdirect pursuit. Taking one
+capture with another, the thing paid very well; and besides, there were
+many vans laden with parcels of tobacco, not from the railway depot but
+from the tobacco factories hard by, a click from which was apt to prove
+especially lucrative. Dicky was a notable success as scout. The
+department was a fairly safe one, but it was not always easy to extract
+from the gang the few coppers that were regarded as sufficient share for
+service done. Moreover, Mr Weech was not pleased; for by now Dicky was
+near to being his most remunerative client, and the cart robberies
+counted nothing, for the fat's a-running boys fenced their swag with a
+publican at Hoxton. And though Dicky had grown out of his childish
+belief that Mr Weech could hear a mile away and see through a wall, he
+had a cautious dread of the weapon he supposed to lie ever to his
+patron's hand&mdash;betrayal to the police. In other respects things were
+easier. His father took no heed of what he did, and even his mother had
+so far accepted destiny as to ask if he had a copper or two, when there
+was a scarcity. Indeed Hannah Perrott filled her place in the Jago
+better than of old. She would gossip, she drew no very rigid line as to
+her acquaintance, and Dicky had seen her drunk. Still, for Old Jago
+Street she was a quiet woman, and she never brawled nor fought. Of
+fighting, indeed, Josh could do enough for the whole family, once again
+four in number. For the place of Looey, forgotten, was supplied by Em,
+aged two.</p>
+
+<p>When Dicky came home and recognised the clock on the mantel-piece, being
+the more certain because his mother told him it had come from Weech's,
+the thing irritated him strangely. Through all those four years since he
+had carried that clock to Mr Weech, he had never got rid of the wretched
+hunchback. He, too, went to the Board School in Honey Lane (it lay
+between Dove Lane and the Jago), but he went regularly, worked hard, and
+was a favourite with teachers. So far, Dicky was unconcerned. But scarce
+an ill chance came to him but, sooner or later, he found the hunchback
+at the back of it. If ever a teacher mysteriously found out that it was
+Dicky who had drawn his portrait, all nose and teeth, on the blackboard,
+the tale had come from Bobby Roper. Whenever Dicky, chancing upon school
+by ill luck on an afternoon when sums were to be done, essayed to copy
+answers from his neighbour's slate, up shot the hunchback's hand in an
+instant, the tale was told, and handers were Dicky's portion. Once,
+dinnerless and hungry, he had stolen a sandwich from a teacher's desk;
+and, though he had thought himself alone and unseen, the hunchback knew
+it, and pointed him out, white malice in his thin face and eager hate in
+his thrust finger. For a fortnight Dicky dared not pass a little fruit
+shop in Meakin Street, because of an attempt on an orange, betrayed by
+his misshapen schoolfellow, which brought him a hard chase from the
+fruiterer and a bad bruise on the spine from a board flung after him.
+The hunchback's whole energies&mdash;even his whole time&mdash;seemed to be
+devoted to watching him. Dicky, on his part, received no injuries
+meekly. In the beginning he had tried threats and public jeers at his
+enemy's infirmity. Then, on some especially exasperating occasion, he
+pounded Bobby Roper savagely about the head and capsized him into a
+mud-heap. But bodily reprisal, though he erected it into a practice,
+proved no deterrent. For the little hunchback, though he might cry at
+the pummelling, retorted with worse revenge of his own sort. And once or
+twice bystanders, seeing a deformed child thus treated, interfered with
+clouts on Dicky's ears. The victim, moreover, designed another
+retaliation. He would go to some bigger boy with a tale that Dicky had
+spoken vauntingly of fighting him and beating him hollow, with one hand.
+This brought the big boy after Dicky at once, with a hiding: except on
+some rare occasion when the hunchback rated his instrument of vengeance
+too high, and Dicky was able to beat him in truth. But this was a very
+uncommon mistake. And after this Dicky did not wait for specific
+provocation: he 'clumped' Bobby Roper, or rolled him in the gutter, as a
+matter of principle, whenever he could get hold of him.</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon Dicky had suffered again. Two days earlier, tea and cake
+had been provided by a benevolent manager for all who attended the
+school. Consequently the attendance was excellent, and included Dicky.
+But his attempt to secrete a pocketful of cake, to carry home for Em,
+was reported by Bobby Roper; and Dicky was hauled forth, deprived of his
+plunder, and expelled in disgrace. He waited outside and paid off the
+score fiercely, by the help of a very long and pliant cabbage stalk. But
+this afternoon Bill Bates, a boy a head taller than himself and two
+years older, had fallen on him suddenly in Lincoln Street, and, though
+Dicky fought desperately and kicked with much effect, had dealt him a
+thrashing that left him bruised, bleeding, dusty, and crying with rage
+and pain. This was the hunchback's doing, without a doubt. Dicky limped
+home, but was something comforted by an accident in Shoreditch High
+Street, whereby a coster's barrow-load of cough-drops was knocked over
+by a covered van, and the cough-drops were scattered in the mud. For
+while the carman and the coster flew at each other's name and address,
+and defamed each other's eyes and mother, Dicky gathered a handful of
+cough-drops, muddy, it is true, but easy to wipe. And so he made for
+home more cheerfully disposed: till the sight of the Ropers' old clock
+brought the hunchback to mind once more, and in bitter anger he resolved
+to search for him forthwith, and pass on the afternoon's hiding, with
+interest.</p>
+
+<p>As he emerged into the street, a hand was reached to catch him, which he
+dodged by instinct. He rushed back upstairs, and emptied his pockets,
+stowing away in a safe corner the rest of the cough-drops, the broken
+ruin he called his knife, some buttons and pieces of string, a bit of
+chalk, three little pieces of slate pencil and two marbles. Then he went
+down again into the street, confident in his destitution, and watched,
+forgetting the hunchback in the excitement of the spectacle.</p>
+
+<p>The loafers from the corners had conceived a sudden notion of
+co-operation, and had joined forces to the array of twenty or thirty.
+Confident in their numbers, they swept the street, stopping every
+passenger&mdash;man, woman or child&mdash;and emptying all pockets. A straggler on
+the outskirts of the crowd, a hobbledehoy like most of the rest, had
+snatched at but had lost Dicky, and was now busy, with four or five
+others, rolling a woman, a struggling heap of old clothes and skinny
+limbs, in the road. It was Biddy Flynn, too old and worn for anything
+but honest work, who sold oranges and nuts from a basket, and who had
+been caught on her way out for her evening's trade in High Street. She
+was a fortunate capture, being a lone woman with all her possessions
+about her. Under her skirt, and tied round her waist with string, she
+kept her money-bag; and it was soon found and dragged away, yielding two
+and eightpence farthing and a lucky shoe-tip, worn round and bright. She
+had, moreover, an old brass brooch; but unfortunately her wedding ring,
+worn to pin-wire, could not be got past the knotted knuckle&mdash;though it
+would have been worth little in any case. So Biddy Flynn, exhausted with
+plunging and screaming, was left, and her empty basket was flung at her.
+She staggered away, wailing and rolling her head, with her hand to the
+wall; and the gang, sharing out, sucked oranges with relish, and turned
+to fresh exploits. Dicky watched from the Jago Court passage.</p>
+
+<p>Business slackened for a little while, and the loafers were
+contemplating a raid in force on Mother Gapp's till, when a grown lad
+ran in pell-mell from Luck Row with a square parcel clipped under his
+arm&mdash;a parcel of aspect well known among the fat's a-running boys&mdash;a
+parcel that meant tobacco. He was collared at once.</p>
+
+<p>'Stow it, Bill!' he cried breathlessly, recognising his captor. 'The
+bloke's a-comin'!'</p>
+
+<p>But half-a-dozen hands were on his plunder, it was snatched away, and he
+was flung back on the flags. There was a clatter on the stones of Luck
+Row, and a light van came rattling into Old Jago Street, the horse
+galloping, the carman lashing and shouting:&mdash;'Stop 'im! Stop thief!'</p>
+
+<p>The sight was so novel that for a moment the gang merely stared and
+grinned. This man must be a greenhorn&mdash;new to the neighbourhood&mdash;to
+venture a load of goods up Luck Row. And it was tobacco, too. He was
+pale and flustered, and he called wildly, as he looked this way and
+that:&mdash;'A man's stole somethin' auf my van. Where's 'e gawn?'</p>
+
+<p>'No good, guv'nor,' cried one. 'The ball's stopped rollin'. You're lawst
+'im.'</p>
+
+<p>'My Gawd!' said the man, in a sweat, 'I'm done. There's two quid's worth
+o' 'bacca&mdash;an' I on'y got the job o' Monday&mdash;bin out nine munse!'</p>
+
+<p>'Was it a parcel like this 'ere?' asked another, chuckling, and lifting
+a second packet over the tailboard.</p>
+
+<p>'Yus&mdash;put it down! Gawd&mdash;wotcher up to? 'Ere&mdash;'elp! 'elp!'</p>
+
+<p>The gang were over the van, guffawing and flinging out the load. The
+carman yelled aloud, and fought desperately with his whip&mdash;Bill Hanks
+is near blind of an eye now from one cut; but he was the worse for it.
+For he was knocked off the van in a heap, and, as he lay, they cleared
+his pockets, and pulled off his boots; those that had caught the sting
+of the whip kicking him about the head till it but shifted in the slime
+at the stroke, an inanimate lump.</p>
+
+<p>There was talk of how to deal with the horse and van. To try to sell
+them was too large a job, and too risky. So, as it was growing dusk, the
+senseless carman was put on the floor of the van, the tailboard was
+raised, and one of the gang led the horse away, to lose the whole thing
+in the busy streets.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a big haul, and many of the crowd busied themselves in getting
+it out of sight, and scouting out among the fences to arrange sales.
+Those who remained grew less active, and hung at the corner of Luck Row,
+little more than an ordinary corner-group of loafers.</p>
+
+<p>Then Dicky remembered the hunchback, and slouched off to Dove Lane. But
+he could see nothing of Bobby Roper. The Jago and Dove Lane were
+districts ever at feud, active or smouldering, save for brief intervals
+of ostentatious reconciliation, serving to render the next attack on
+Dove Lane the more savage&mdash;for invariably the Jagos were aggressors and
+victors. Dicky was careful in his lurkings, therefore: lest he should be
+recognised and set upon by more Dove Lane boys than would be convenient.
+He knew where the Ropers lived, and he went and hung about the door.
+Once he fancied he could hear a disjointed tinkle, as of a music-box
+grown infirm, but he was not sure of it. And in the end he contented
+himself, for the present, with flinging a stone through the Ropers'
+window, and taking to his heels.</p>
+
+<p>The Jago was black with night, the rats came and went, and the
+cosh-carriers lurked on landings. On a step, Pigeony Poll, drunk because
+of a little gin and no food, sang hideously and wept. The loafers had
+dispersed to spend their afternoon's makings. The group which Dicky had
+left by Luck Row corner, indeed, had been discouraged early in the
+evening in consequence of an attempt at 'turning over' old Beveridge, as
+he unsuspectingly stalked among them, in from his city round. For the
+old man whipped out his case-knife and drove it into the flesh of Nobber
+Sugg's arm, at the shoulder&mdash;stabbed, too, at another, and ripped his
+coat. So Nobber Sugg, with blood streaming through his sleeve, went off
+with two more to tie up the arm; and old Beveridge, grinning and
+mumbling fiercely, strode about the street, knife in hand, for ten
+minutes, ere he grew calm enough to go his way. This Tommy Rann told
+Dicky, sitting in the back-yard and smoking a pipe; a pipe charged with
+tobacco pillaged from a tin-full which his father had bought, at about
+fourpence a pound, from a loafer. And both boys crawled indoors deadly
+sick.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVI" id="XVI"></a>XVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Josh Perrott was at church on Sunday morning, as Father Sturt had bid
+him. Not because of the bidding, but because the vicar overtook him and
+Kiddo Cook in Meakin Street, and hauled them in, professing to be much
+gratified at their punctuality, and charging them never to fall away
+from the habit. The two Jagos, with dubious grins, submitted as they
+must, and were in a little while surprised to find others arriving,
+friends and acquaintances never suspected of church-going. The fact was,
+that Father Sturt, by dint of long effort, had so often brought so many
+to his stable-church, as he had now brought Josh and Kiddo, that the
+terrors and embarrassments of the place had worn off, and many, finding
+nothing more attractive elsewhere, would make occasional attendances of
+their own motion. Wet Sundays, particularly, inclined them to church:
+where there might be a fire, where at least there was a clean room, with
+pictures on the wall, where there were often flowers, where there was
+always music, and where Father Sturt made an address of a quarter of an
+hour, which nobody ever suspected of being a sermon; an address which
+one might doze over or listen to, as one might be disposed; but which
+most listened to, more or less, partly because of an uneasy feeling that
+Father Sturt would know if they did not, and partly because it was very
+easy to understand, was not oppressively minatory, was spoken with an
+intimate knowledge of themselves, and was, indeed, something of a
+refreshing novelty, being the simple talk of a gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>Josh Perrott and Kiddo Cook were not altogether sorry they had come. It
+was a rest. Stable though it had been, they had never sat in so pleasant
+a room before. There was nothing to do, no constant watch to be kept, no
+police to avoid, and their wits had a holiday. They forgot things. Their
+courage never rose so high as to build the thought; but in truth pipes
+would have made them happy.</p>
+
+<p>The address being done, Father Sturt announced the purchase of the site
+for the new church, and briefly described his scheme. He would give
+tenants good notice, he said, before the houses were destroyed.
+Meantime, they must pay rent; though most of the amounts would be
+reduced.</p>
+
+<p>And after the benediction, Father Sturt, from his window over the closed
+shop, saw Josh Perrott and Kiddo Cook guffawing and elbowing one another
+up Luck Row. Each was accusing the other of having tried to sing.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVII" id="XVII"></a>XVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>There was much talk of Father Sturt's announcement. Many held it a shame
+that so much money, destined for the benefit of the Jago, should be
+spent in bricks and mortar, instead of being distributed among
+themselves. They fell to calculating the price of the land and houses,
+and to working it out laboriously in the denomination of pots and
+gallons. More: it was felt to be a grave social danger that Jago Court
+should be extinguished. What would become of the Jago without Jago
+Court? Where would Sunday morning be spent? Where would the fights come
+off, and where was so convenient a place for pitch and toss? But mainly
+they feared the police. Jago Court was an unfailing sanctuary, a city of
+refuge ever ready, ever secure. There were times when two or three of
+the police, hot in the chase, would burst into the Jago at the heels of
+a flying marauder. Then the runaway would make straight for the archway,
+and, once he was in Jago Court, danger was over. For he had only to run
+into one of the ever-open doors at right or left, and out into
+back-yards and other houses; or, better, to scramble over the low fence
+opposite, through the back door before him, and so into New Jago Street.
+Beyond the archway the police could not venture, except in large
+companies. A young constable who tried it once, getting ahead of two
+companions in his ardour, was laid low as he emerged from the passage,
+by a fire-grate adroitly let drop from an upper window.</p>
+
+<p>The blotting out of such a godsend of a place as this would be a
+calamity. The Jago would never be the same again. As it was, the Old
+Jago was a very convenient, comfortable sort of place, they argued. They
+could not imagine themselves living anywhere else. But assuredly it
+would be the Jago no longer without Jago Court. And this thing was to be
+done, too, with money got together for their benefit! The sole
+explanation the Jago could supply was the one that at last, with
+arithmetical variations, prevailed. The landlords were to be paid a sum
+(varying in Jago estimation from a hundred pounds to a hundred thousand)
+for the houses and the ground, and of this they were secretly to return
+to Father Sturt a certain share (generally agreed on as half), as his
+private fee for bringing about so desirable a transaction. Looked at
+from all points, this appeared to be the most plausible explanation: for
+no other could reasonably account for Father Sturt's activity. No wonder
+he could afford to reduce some of the rents! Was he not already
+receiving princely wages (variously supposed to be something from ten
+pounds to thirty pounds a week) from the Government, for preaching every
+Sunday?</p>
+
+<p>Still the rents were to be reduced: that was the immediate
+consideration, and nothing but an immediate consideration carried weight
+in the Jago, where a shilling to-day was to be preferred to a constant
+income beginning in a month's time. The first effect of the announcement
+was a rush of applications for rooms in the doomed houses, each
+applicant demanding to be accommodated by the eviction of somebody
+already established, but now disinterestedly discovered to be a bad
+tenant. They were all disappointed, but the residents had better luck
+than they had hoped. For the unexpected happened, and the money for a
+part of the new buildings was suddenly guaranteed. Wherefore Father
+Sturt, knowing that many would be hard put to it to find shelter when
+the houses came down, and guessing that rents would rise with the
+demand, determined to ask none for the little while the tenements
+endured. Scarce had he made his decision known ere he regretted it,
+popular as it was. For he reflected that the money saved would merely
+melt, and that at the inevitable turning out, not a soul would be the
+better off for the relief, but, indeed, might find it harder than ever
+to pay rent after the temporary easement. It would have been better
+rigidly to exact the rent, and return it in lump to each tenant as he
+left. The sum would have been an inducement to leave peaceably&mdash;a matter
+in which trouble was to be expected. But then, what did any windfall of
+shillings bring in the Jago? What but a drunk? This was one of Father
+Sturt's thousand perplexities, and he could but hope that, perhaps, he
+had done right after all.</p>
+
+<p>The old buildings were sold, as they stood, to the house-wreckers, and
+on the house-wreckers devolved the work of getting the lodgers out. For
+weeks the day was deferred, but it drew very near at last, and a tall
+hoarding was put up. Next morning it had vanished; but there was a loud
+crackling where the Jagos boiled their pots; Dicky Perrott and Tommy
+Rann had a bonfire in Edge Lane; and Jerry Gullen's canary sweated
+abroad before a heavy load of cheap firewood.</p>
+
+<p>Then Josh Perrott and Billy Leary, his old enemy, were appointed joint
+guardians of the new hoarding, each to get half-a-crown on every morning
+when the fence was found intact. And in the end there came eviction day,
+and once more the police held the Jago in force, escorting gangs of men
+with tumbrils.</p>
+
+<p>As for the Perrotts, they could easily find another room, at the high
+rent always charged for the privilege of residence in the Jago. To have
+remained in one room four or five years, and to have paid rent with
+indifferent good regularity was a feat sufficiently rare to be
+notorious, and to cause way to be made for them wherever a room was
+falling vacant, or could be emptied. They went no farther than across
+the way, to a room wherein a widow had died over her sack-making two
+days before, and had sat on the floor with her head between her knees
+for hours, while her children, not understanding, cried that they were
+hungry. These children were now gone to the workhouse: more fortunate
+than the many they left behind. And the room was a very fair one, ten
+feet square or so.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the tenants thought not at all of new quarters, and did
+nothing to find them, till they found themselves and their belongings
+roofless in Old Jago Street. Then with one accord they demanded lodgings
+of the vicar. Most of them had never inhabited any rooms so long as they
+had these which they must now leave&mdash;having been ejected again and
+again because of unpaid rent. Nevertheless, they clamoured for redress
+as they might have clamoured had they never changed dwellings in their
+lives.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody resisted the police; for there were too many of them. Moreover,
+Father Sturt was there, and few had hardihood for any but their best
+behaviour in his presence. Still, there were disputes among the Jagos
+themselves, that sometimes came very near to fights. Ginger Stagg's
+missis professed to recognise a long-lost property in a tin kettle
+brought into the outer air among the belongings of Mrs Walsh. The
+miscellaneous rags and sticks that were Cocko Harnwell's household goods
+got mingled in the roadway with those appertaining to the Fishers; and
+their assortment without a turn of family combat was a task which tried
+the vicar's influence to the utmost. Mrs Rafferty, too, was suspected of
+undue pride in a cranky deal wash-stand, and thereby of a disposition to
+sneer at the humbler turn-out of the Regans from the next floor: giving
+occasion for a shrill and animated row.</p>
+
+<p>The weather was dry, fortunately, and the evicted squatted in the
+roadway, by their heaps, or on them, squabbling and lamenting. Ginger
+Stagg, having covered certain crockery with the old family mattress,
+forgetfully sat on it, and came upon Father Sturt with an indignant
+demand for compensation.</p>
+
+<p>Father Sturt's efforts to stimulate a search for new lodgings met with
+small success at first. It was felt that, no doubt, there were lodgings
+to be had, but they would be open to the fatal objection of costing
+something; and the Jago temperament could neither endure nor understand
+payment for what had once been given for nothing. Father Sturt, the
+Jagos argued, had given them free quarters for so long. Then why should
+he stop now? If they cleared out in order to make room for his new
+church, in common fairness he should find them similar lodging on the
+same terms. So they sat and waited for him to do it.</p>
+
+<p>At length the vicar set to work with them in good earnest, carried away
+with him a family or two at a time, and inducted them to rooms of his
+own finding. And hereat others, learning that in these cases rent in
+advance was exacted, bestirred themselves: reflecting that if rent must
+be paid they might as well choose their own rooms as take those that
+Father Sturt might find. Of course the thing was not done without
+payments from the vicar's pocket. Some were wholly destitute; others
+could not muster enough to pay that advance of rent which alone could
+open a Jago tenancy. Distinguishing the genuine impecuniosity from the
+merely professed, with the insight that was now a sixth sense with him,
+Father Sturt helped sparingly and in secret; for a precedent of
+almsgiving was an evil thing in the Jago, confirming the shiftlessness
+which was already a piece of Jago nature, and setting up long affliction
+for the almsgiver. Enough of such precedents existed; and the inevitable
+additions thereto were a work of anxious responsibility and jealous
+care.</p>
+
+<p>So the bivouac in Old Jago Street melted away. For one thing, there were
+those among the dispossessed who would not waste time in unproductive
+inactivity just then; for war had arisen with Dove Lane, and spoils were
+going. Dove Lane was no very reputable place, but it was not like the
+Jago. In the phrase of the district, the Dove Laners were pretty thick,
+but the Jagos were thick as glue. There were many market-porters among
+the Dove Laners, and at this, their prosperous season, they and their
+friends resorted to a shop in Meakin Street, kept by an 'ikey' tailor,
+there to buy the original out-and-out downy benjamins, or the celebrated
+bang-up kicksies, cut saucy, with artful buttons and a double fakement
+down the sides. And hereabout they were apt to be set upon by Jagos;
+overthrown by superior numbers; bashed; and cleaned out. Or, if the
+purchases had been made, they were flimped of their kicksies, benjies or
+daisies, as the case might be. So that a fight with Dove Lane might be
+an affair of some occasional profit; and it became no loyal Jago to idle
+in the stronghold.</p>
+
+<p>Father Sturt's task was nearly over, when, returning to Old Jago Street,
+he saw Dicky Perrott sitting by a still-remaining heap&mdash;a heap small and
+poor even among those others. The Perrotts had been decorously settled
+in their new home since early morning; but here was Dicky, guarding a
+heap with a baby on it, and absorbed in the weaving of rush bags.</p>
+
+<p>'That's right, Dicky my boy,' said Father Sturt in the approving voice
+that a Jago would do almost anything&mdash;except turn honest&mdash;to hear. And
+Dicky, startled, looked up, flushed and happy, over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>'Rush bags, eh?' the vicar went on, stooping and handing Dicky another
+rush from the heap. 'And whose are they?'</p>
+
+<p>The bags, the rushes, the heap, and the baby belonged to Mrs Bates, the
+widow, who was now in search of a new room. Dicky had often watched the
+weaving of fishmongers' frails, and, since it was work in which he had
+had no opportunity of indulging, it naturally struck him as a
+fascinating pastime. So that he was delighted by the chance which he had
+taken, and Mrs Bates, for her part, was not sorry to find somebody to
+mind her property. Moreover, by hard work and the skill begot of much
+practice, she was able to earn a sum of some three farthings an hour at
+the rush bags: a profit which her cupidity made her reluctant to lose,
+for even half an hour. And thus to have Dicky carry on the business&mdash;and
+in his enthusiasm he did it very well&mdash;was a further consideration.</p>
+
+<p>Father Sturt chatted with Dicky till the boy could scarce plait for very
+pride. Would not Dicky like to work regularly every day, asked Father
+Sturt, and earn wages? Dicky could see no graceful answer but the
+affirmative; and in sober earnest he thought he would. Father Sturt took
+hold of Dicky's vanity. Was he not capable of something better than
+other Jago boys? Why should he not earn regular wages, and live
+comfortably, well fed and clothed, with no fear of the police, and no
+shame for what he did? <i>He</i> might do it, when others could not. They
+were not clever enough. They called themselves 'clever' and 'wide;'
+'but,' said Father Sturt, 'is there one of them that can deceive me?'
+And Dicky knew there was not one. Most did no work, the vicar's argument
+went on, because they had neither the pluck to try nor the intelligence
+to accomplish. Else why did they live the wretched Jago life instead of
+take the pleasanter time of the decent labourer?</p>
+
+<p>Dicky, already zealous at work as exampled in rush bag-making, listened
+with wistful pride. Yes, if he could, he would work and take his place
+over the envious heads of his Jago friends. But how? Nobody would employ
+a boy living in the Jago. That was notorious. The address was a
+topsy-turvy testimonial for miles round.</p>
+
+<p>All the same when Mrs Bates at last took away her belongings, Dicky ran
+off in delighted amaze to tell his mother and Em that he was going to
+tea at Father Sturt's rooms.</p>
+
+<p>And the wreckers tore down the foul old houses, laying bare the secret
+dens of a century of infamy; lifting out the wide sashes of the old
+'weavers' windows'&mdash;the one good feature in the structures; letting
+light and air at last into the subterraneous basements where men and
+women had swarmed, and bred, and died, like wolves in their lairs; and
+emerging from clouds of choking dust, each man a colony of vermin. But
+there were rooms which the wreckers&mdash;no jack-a-dandies neither&mdash;flatly
+refused to enter; and nothing would make them but much coaxing, the
+promise of extra pay, and the certainty of much immediate beer.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XVIII" id="XVIII"></a>XVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mr Grinder kept a shop in the Bethnal Green Road. It was announced in
+brilliant lettering as an 'oil, colour and Italian warehouse,' and
+there, in addition to the oil and the colour, and whatever of Italian
+there might have been, he sold pots, pans, kettles, brooms, shovels,
+mops, lamps, nails, and treacle. It was a shop ever too tight for its
+stock, which burst forth at every available opening, and heaped so high
+on the paving that the window was half buried in a bank of shining tin.
+Father Sturt was one of the best customers: the oil, candles and
+utensils needed for church and club all coming from Mr Grinder's. Mr
+Grinder was losing his shop-boy, who had found a better situation; and
+Father Sturt determined that, could but the oil-man be persuaded, Dicky
+Perrott should be the new boy. Mr Grinder was persuaded. Chiefly
+perhaps, because the vicar undertook to make good the loss, should the
+experiment end in theft; partly because it was policy to oblige a good
+customer; and partly, indeed, because Mr Grinder was willing to give
+such a boy a chance in life, for he was no bad fellow, as
+oil-and-colourmen go, and had been an errand boy himself.</p>
+
+<p>So that there came a Monday morning when Dicky, his clothes as well
+mended as might be (for Hannah Perrott, no more than another Jago, could
+disobey Father Sturt), and a cut-down apron of his mother's tied before
+him, stood by Mr Grinder's bank of pots and kettles, in an eager agony
+to sell something, and near blind with the pride of the thing. He had
+been waiting at the shop-door long ere Mr Grinder was out of bed; and
+now, set to guard the outside stock&mdash;a duty not to be neglected in that
+neighbourhood&mdash;he brushed a tin pot here and there with his sleeve, and
+longed for some Jago friend to pass and view him in his new greatness.
+The goods he watched over were an unfailing source of interest; and he
+learned by much repetition the prices of all the saucepans, painted in
+blue distemper on the tin, and ranging from eightpence-halfpenny, on the
+big pots in the bottom row, to three-halfpence on the very little ones
+at the top. And there were long ranks of little paraffin lamps at a
+penny&mdash;the sort that had set fire to a garret in Half Jago Street a
+month since, and burnt old Mother Leary to a greasy cinder. With a
+smaller array of a superior quality at fourpence-halfpenny&mdash;just like
+the one that had burst at Jerry Gullen's, and burnt the bed. While over
+his head swung doormats at one-and-eightpence, with penny mousetraps
+dangling from their corners.</p>
+
+<p>When he grew more accustomed to his circumstances, he bethought him to
+collect a little dirt, and rub it down the front of his apron, to give
+himself a well-worked and business-like appearance; and he greatly
+impeded women who looked at the saucepans and the mousetraps, ere they
+entered the shop, by his anxiety to cut them off from Mr Grinder and
+serve them himself. He remembered the boy at the toy-shop in Bishopsgate
+Street, years ago, who had chased him through Spitalfields; and he
+wished that some lurching youngster would snatch a mousetrap, that he
+might make a chase himself.</p>
+
+<p>At Mr Grinder's every call Dicky was prompt and willing; for every new
+duty was a fresh delight, and the whole day a prolonged game of real
+shopkeeping. And at his tea&mdash;he was to have tea each day in addition to
+three and sixpence every Saturday&mdash;he took scarce five minutes. There
+was a trolley&mdash;just such a thing as porters used at railway stations,
+but smaller&mdash;which was his own particular implement, his own to pack
+parcels on for delivery to such few customers as did not carry away
+their own purchases: and to acquire the dexterous management of this
+trolley was a pure joy. He bolted his tea to start the sooner on a
+trolley-journey to a public-house two hundred yards away.</p>
+
+<p>His enthusiasm for work as an amusement cooled in a day or two, but all
+his pride in it remained. The fight with Dove Lane waxed amain, but
+Dicky would not be tempted into more than a distant interest in it. In
+his day-dreams he saw himself a tradesman, with a shop of his own and
+the name 'R. Perrott,' with a gold flourish, over the door. He would
+employ a boy himself then; and there would be a parlour, with
+stuff-bottomed chairs and a shade of flowers, and Em grown up and
+playing on the piano. Truly Father Sturt was right: the hooks were
+fools, and the straight game was the better.</p>
+
+<p>Bobby Roper, the hunchback, went past the shop once, and saw him. Dicky,
+minding his new dignity, ignored his enemy, and for the first time for a
+year and more, allowed him to pass without either taunt or blow. The
+other, astonished at Dicky's new occupation, came back and back again,
+staring, from a safe distance, at Dicky and the shop. Dicky, on his
+part, took no more notice than to assume an ostentatious vigilance: so
+that the hunchback, baring his teeth in a snigger of malice, at last
+turned on his heel and rolled off.</p>
+
+<p>Twice Kiddo Cook passed, but made no sign of recognition beyond a wink;
+and Dicky felt grateful for Kiddo's obvious fear of compromising him.
+Once old Beveridge came by, striding rapidly, his tatters flying, and
+the legend 'Hard Up' chalked on his hat, as was his manner in his town
+rambles. He stopped abruptly at sight of Dicky, stooped, and
+said:&mdash;'Dicky Perrott? Hum&mdash;hum&mdash;hey?' Then he hurried on, doubtless
+conceiving just such a fear as Kiddo Cook's. As for Tommy Rann, his
+affections were alienated by Dicky's outset refusal to secrete treacle
+in a tin mug for a midnight carouse; and he did not show himself. So
+matters went for near a week.</p>
+
+<p>But Mr Weech missed Dicky sadly. It was rare for a day to pass without a
+visit from Dicky, and Dicky had a way of bringing good things. Mr Weech
+would not have sold Dicky's custom for ten shillings a week. So that
+when Mr Weech inquired, and found that Dicky was at work in an oil-shop,
+he was naturally annoyed. Moreover, if Dicky Perrott got into <i>that</i> way
+of life, he would have no fear for himself, and might get talking
+inconveniently among his new friends about the business affairs of Mr
+Aaron Weech. And at this reflection that philanthropist grew
+thoughtful.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XIX" id="XIX"></a>XIX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Dicky had gone on an errand, and Mr Grinder was at the shop door, when
+there appeared before him a whiskered and smirking figure, with a quick
+glance each way along the street, and a long and smiling one at the
+oil-man's necktie.</p>
+
+<p>'Good mornin', Mr Grinder, good mornin' sir.' Mr Weech stroked his left
+palm with his right fist and nodded pleasantly. 'I'm in business meself,
+over in Meakin Street&mdash;name of Weech: p'r'aps you know the shop? I&mdash;I
+jist 'opped over to ask'&mdash;Grinder led the way into the shop&mdash;'to ask
+(so's to make things quite sure y'know, though no doubt it's all right)
+to ask if it's correct you're awfferin' brass roastin'-jacks at a
+shillin' each.'</p>
+
+<p>'Brass roastin'-jacks at a shillin'?' exclaimed Grinder, shocked at the
+notion. 'Why, no!'</p>
+
+<p>Mr Weech appeared mildly surprised. 'Nor yut seven-poun' jars o' jam an'
+pickles at sixpence?' he pursued, with his eye on those ranged behind
+the counter.</p>
+
+<p>'No!'</p>
+
+<p>'Nor doormats at fourpence?'</p>
+
+<p>'Fourpence? Cert'nly not!'</p>
+
+<p>Mr Weech's face fell into a blank perplexity. He pawed his ear with a
+doubtful air, murmuring absently:&mdash;'Well I'm sure 'e <i>said</i> fourpence:
+an' sixpence for pickles, an' bring 'em round after the shop was shut.
+But there', he added, more briskly, 'there's no 'arm done, an' no doubt
+it's a mistake.' He turned as though to leave, but Grinder restrained
+him.</p>
+
+<p>'But look 'ere,' he said, 'I want to know about this. Wotjer mean? <i>'Oo</i>
+was goin' to bring round pickles after the shop was shut? <i>'Oo</i> said
+fourpence for doormats?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I expect it's jest a little mistake, that's all,' answered Weech,
+making another motion toward the door; 'an' I don't want to git nobody
+into trouble.'</p>
+
+<p>'Trouble? Nice trouble I'd be in if I sold brass smoke-jacks for a bob!
+There's somethink 'ere as I ought to know about. Tell me about it
+straight.'</p>
+
+<p>Weech looked thoughtfully at the oil-man's top waistcoat button for a
+few seconds, and then said:&mdash;'Yus, p'raps I better. I can feel for you,
+Mr Grinder, 'avin' a feelin' 'art, an' bein' in business meself. Where's
+your boy?'</p>
+
+<p>'Gawn out.'</p>
+
+<p>'Comin' back soon?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not yut. Come in the back-parlour.'</p>
+
+<p>There Mr Weech, with ingenuous reluctance, assured Mr Grinder that Dicky
+Perrott had importuned him to buy the goods in question at the prices he
+had mentioned, together with others&mdash;readily named now that the oil-man
+swallowed so freely&mdash;and that they were to be delivered and paid for at
+night when Dicky left work. But perhaps, Mr Weech concluded, parading an
+obstinate belief in human nature, perhaps the boy, being new to the
+business, had mistaken the prices, and was merely doing his best to push
+his master's trade.</p>
+
+<p>'No fear o' that,' said Grinder, shaking his head gloomily. 'Not the
+least fear o' that. 'E knows the cheapest doormats I got's one an'
+six&mdash;I 'eard him tell customers so outside a dozen times; an' anyone can
+see the smoke-jacks is ticketed five an 'nine'&mdash;as Mr Weech had seen,
+when he spoke of them. 'I thought that boy was too eager an' willin' to
+be quite genavin,' Dicky's master went on. ''E ain't 'ad me yut, that's
+one comfort: if anythin' 'ud bin gawn I'd 'a' missed it. But out 'e goes
+as soon as 'e comes back: you can take yer davy o' that!'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah,' replied Mr Weech, 'it's fearful the wickedness there is about,
+ain't it? It's enough to break yer 'art. Sich a neighb'r'ood, too! Wy,
+if it was known as I'd give you this 'ere little friendly information,
+bein' in business meself an' knowin' wot it is, my life wouldn't be safe
+a hower. It wouldn't, Mr Grinder.'</p>
+
+<p>'Wouldn't it?' said Mr Grinder. 'You mean them in the Jago, I s'pose.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yus. They're a awful lot, Mr Grinder&mdash;you've no idear. The father o'
+this 'ere boy as I've warned you aginst, 'e's in with a desprit gang,
+an' they'd murder me if they thought I'd come an' told you honest, w'en
+you might 'a' bin robbed, as is my nature to. They would indeed. So o'
+course you won't say wot I toldjer, nor 'oo give you this 'ere
+honourable friendly warnin'&mdash;not to nobody.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's awright,' answered the simple Grinder, 'I won't let on. But out
+'e goes, promp'. I'm obliged to ye, Mr Weech. Er&mdash;r wot'll ye take?'</p>
+
+<p>Weech put away the suggestion with a virtuous palm:&mdash;'Nothink at all, Mr
+Grinder, thanks all the same. I never touch nothink; an' I'm glad to&mdash;to
+do any moral job, so to speak, as comes in my way. 'Scatter seeds o'
+kindness' you know, as the&mdash;the Psalm says, Mr Grinder. Your boy ain't
+back, is 'e?'</p>
+
+<p>And after peering cautiously, Mr Weech went his way.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XX" id="XX"></a>XX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Dicky completed his round, and pushed his unladen trolley Grinder-ward
+with a fuller sense of responsibility than ever. For he carried money. A
+publican had paid him four and threepence, and he had taken two and
+tenpence elsewhere. He had left his proud signature, pencilled large and
+black, on two receipts, and he stopped in a dozen doorways to count the
+money over again, and make sure that all was right. Between the halts he
+added four and three to two and ten mentally, and proved his sum correct
+by subtracting each in turn from seven and a penny. And at last he stood
+his trolley on end by the bank of saucepans, and entered the shop.</p>
+
+<p>'Walker's is paid, an' Wilkins is paid,' said Dicky, putting down the
+money. 'Two an' ten an' four an' three's seven an' a penny.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr Grinder looked steadily and sourly at Dicky, and counted. He pitched
+the odd penny into the till and shook the rest of the coins in his
+closed hand, still staring moodily in the boy's face. 'It's three an'
+six a week you come 'ere at,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Yus sir,' Dicky replied, since Grinder seemed to expect an answer. The
+supreme moment when he should take his first wages had been the week's
+beacon to him, reddening and brightening as Saturday night grew nearer.</p>
+
+<p>'Three an' six a week an' yer tea.'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky wondered.</p>
+
+<p>'So as if I found out anythink about&mdash;say Brass Roastin'-jacks for
+instance&mdash;I could give ye yer three an' six an' start y' auf, unless I
+did somethin' wuss.'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky was all incomprehension; but something made him feel a little
+sick.</p>
+
+<p>'But s'posin' I <i>didn't</i> find out anythink about&mdash;say Seven-pun' Jars o'
+Pickles&mdash;an' s'pose I wasn't disposed to suspect anythink in regard
+to&mdash;say Doormats; then I could either give ye a week s notice or pay y'
+a week's money an' clear y' out on the spot, without no more trouble.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr Grinder paused, and still looked at Dicky with calm dislike. Then he
+added, as though in answer to himself, 'Yus.' ...</p>
+
+<p>He dropped the money slowly from his right hand to his left. Dicky's
+mouth was dry, and the drawers and pickle-jars swam before him at each
+side of Grinder's head. What did it mean?</p>
+
+<p>''Ere y' are,' cried Mr Grinder, with sudden energy, thrusting his hand
+across the counter. 'Two three-and-sixes is seven shillin's, an' you can
+git yer tea at 'ome with yer dirty little sister. Git out o' my shop!'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky's hand closed mechanically on the money, and after a second's
+pause, he found broken speech. 'W&mdash;w&mdash;wot for, sir?' he asked, huskily.
+'I ain't done nothink!'</p>
+
+<p>'No, an' you sha'n't do nothink, that's more. Out ye go! If I see ye
+near the place agin I'll 'ave ye locked up!'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky slunk to the door. He felt the sobs coming, but he turned at the
+threshold and said with tremulous lips:&mdash;'Woncher gimme a chance, sir?
+S'elp me, I done me best. I&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Mr Grinder made a short rush from the back of the shop, and Dicky gave
+up and fled.</p>
+
+<p>It was all over. There could never be a shop with 'R. Perrott' painted
+over it, now; there would be no parlour with stuff-bottomed chairs and a
+piano for Em to play. He was cut off from the trolley for ever. Dicky
+was thirteen, and at that age the children of the Jago were past
+childish tears; but tears he could not smother, even till he might find
+a hiding-place: they burst out shamefully in the open street.</p>
+
+<p>He took dark turnings, and hid his head in doorways. It was very bitter.
+At last, when the sobs grew fewer, he remembered the money gripped in
+his wet fist. It was a consolation. Seven shillings was a vast sum in
+Dicky's eyes; until that day he had never handled so much in his life.
+It would have been handsome recompense, he thought, for any trouble in
+the world but this. He must take it home, of course; it might avail to
+buy sympathy of his father and mother. But then, to think he might have
+had as much every fortnight of his life, a good tea every day, and the
+proud responsibility, and the trolley! At this his lips came awry again,
+his eyes sought his sleeve, and he turned to another doorway.</p>
+
+<p>His glance fell on the white apron, now smudged and greased in good
+earnest. It made him feel worse; so he untied it and stuffed it away
+under his jacket. He wondered vaguely what had occurred to irritate Mr
+Grinder, and why he talked of pickles and doormats; but the sorrow of it
+all afflicted him to the extinction of such minor speculation. And in
+this misery he dragged his reluctant feet toward the Old Jago.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXI" id="XXI"></a>XXI</h2>
+
+
+<p>He handed his father the seven shillings, and received a furious belting
+for losing his situation. He cried quietly, but it was not because of
+the strap. All he feared now was to meet Father Sturt. He had rather
+fifty beltings than Father Sturt's reproaches; and, having disgraced
+himself with Mr Grinder in some mysterious way which it was beyond his
+capacity to understand, what but reproaches could he expect from the
+vicar? The whole world was against him. As for himself, he was hopeless:
+plainly he must have some incomprehensible defect of nature, since he
+offended, do as he might, and could neither understand nor redeem his
+fault. He wondered if it had been so with little Neddy Wright, who had
+found the world too ruthless for him at ten; and had tied a brick to
+his neck, as he had seen done with needless dogs, and let himself
+timidly down into the canal at Haggerstone Bridge.</p>
+
+<p>So he shuffled through Jago Row, when a hand came on his shoulder and a
+hoarse voice said:&mdash;'Wot's the matter, Dicky?'</p>
+
+<p>He turned, and saw the mild, coarse face of Pigeony Poll, the jaw
+whereof was labouring on something tough and sticky. Poll pulled from
+her pocket a glutinous paper, clinging about a cohesive lump of broken
+toffee&mdash;the one luxury of her moneyed times. ''Ave a bit,' she said.
+'Wot's the matter?'</p>
+
+<p>But Dicky thrust the hand away and fled, for he feared another burst of
+tears. His eyes were bad enough as it was, and he longed to hide himself
+in some hole.</p>
+
+<p>He turned into New Jago Street. Hither it was that Jerry Gullen had
+betaken himself with his family and the Canary, after the great
+eviction. Dicky slackened his pace, loitered at Jerry's doorway, and
+presently found himself in the common passage. It was long since he had
+had a private interview with Jerry Gullen's canary: for, indeed, he was
+thirteen&mdash;he was no longer a child, in fact!&mdash;and it was not well that
+he should indulge in such foolish weakness. Nevertheless he went as far
+as the back door. There stood the old donkey, mangy and infirm as ever,
+but apparently no nearer the end. The wood of the fence was bitten in
+places, but it was not as yet gnawed to the general whiteness and
+roundness of that in Canary's old abode. Canary, indeed, was fortunate
+to-day, for at the sound of Dicky's step he lifted his nose from a small
+heap of straw, dust, and mouldy hay, swept into a corner. Dicky stepped
+into the yard, and put his hand on Canary's neck; presently he glanced
+guiltily at the windows above. Nobody was looking. And in five minutes
+Dicky, aged as he was, had told Canary his troubles, while new tears
+wetted the ragged crest and dropped into the dusty straw.</p>
+
+<p>Now his grief lost some of its edge. Ashamed as he was, he had a
+shapeless, unapprehended notion that Canary was the sole creature alive
+that could understand and feel with him. And Canary poked his nose under
+the old jacket and sniffed in sympathy, as the broken lining tickled
+him. Dicky's intellectuals began to arrange themselves. Plainly, Mr
+Weech's philosophy was right after all. He was of the Jago, and he must
+prey on the outer world, as all the Jago did; not stray foolishly off
+the regular track in chase of visions, and fall headlong. Father Sturt
+was a creature of another mould. Who was he, Dicky Perrott, that he
+should break away from the Jago habit, and strain after another nature?
+What could come of it but defeat and bitterness? As old Beveridge had
+said, the Jago had got him. Why should he fight against the inevitable,
+and bruise himself? The ways out of the Jago old Beveridge had told him,
+years ago. Gaol, the gallows and the High Mob. There was his chance, his
+aspiration, his goal: the High Mob. To dream of oil-shops or regular
+wages was foolishness. His bed was made in the Jago, and he must lie on
+it. His hope in life, if he might have a hope at all, was to be of the
+High Mob. Spare nobody, stop at nothing, do his devilmost: old Beveridge
+had said that years ago. The task was before him, and he must not balk
+at it. As for gaol and the gallows, well! There they were, and he could
+not help it; ill ways out of the Jago, both, but still&mdash;ways out.</p>
+
+<p>He rubbed his face carefully with his sleeve, put away his foolish
+ambitions, and went forth with a brave heart: to accomplish his destiny
+for well or ill,&mdash;a Jago rat. To do his devilmost. But to avoid Father
+Sturt.</p>
+
+<p>Out he went into Shoreditch High Street, and there he prowled the
+evening away; there and in Norton Folgate. But he touched for
+nothing&mdash;nothing at all. He feared lest his week's honesty had damaged
+his training. Even an apple on a stall he failed at, and had to run. And
+then he turned into Bethnal Green Road.</p>
+
+<p>But here a thought checked him suddenly. What of Mr Grinder? He had
+threatened to have Dicky locked up if he came near the shop again. But a
+child of the Jago knew too much to be frightened by such a threat as
+that. He went on. He felt interested to see how his late employer was
+getting along without him, and who was minding the goods outside the
+shop. Probably there was nobody: and this gave Dicky an idea.</p>
+
+<p>He had forgotten his smudgy apron, folded and tucked away in the lining
+of his jacket. Now he pulled it out, and fastened it before him once
+more. He knew Mr Grinder's habits in the shop, and if he could seize a
+fitting opportunity he might be able, attired in his apron, to pick up
+or reach down any article that struck his fancy, fearless of
+interference from passers-by; for he would seem to be still shop-boy.</p>
+
+<p>With that he hastened, for it was near closing time at Grinder's. He
+took the opposite side of the road, the better to observe unseen in the
+darkness. But Mr Grinder had already begun to carry things in from the
+pavement. As Dicky looked he came out with a long pole wherewith he
+unhooked from above a clattering cluster of pails and watering pots, and
+a bunch of doormats. The doormats he let fall on the flags, while he
+carried in the pots and pails. Dicky knew that these pots and pails were
+kept at night in a shed behind the house; so he scuttled across the
+road, opening the blade of his old knife as he ran. He cut the string
+that held the mats together, selected a thick one, rolled it under his
+arm, and edged off into the shadow. Then he ran quietly across to the
+nearest turning.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Mr Grinder came out, hooked his finger in the string among the
+mats, and pulled up nothing. He stooped, and saw that the string was
+cut. He looked about him suspiciously, flung the mats over, and counted
+them. Then he stood erect; stared up the street, down the street, and
+across the road, with his mouth open; and made short rushes left and
+right into the gloom. Then he returned to the mats and scratched his
+head. Finally, he gave another glance about the street, picked up the
+mats in his arms and carried them in, counting them as he went. And, the
+mats bestowed, whenever he came forth for a fresh armful of saucepans,
+he stood and gazed doubtfully, now this way, now that, about the Bethnal
+Green Road.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Aaron Weech was pushing his last shutter into its place when 'Clean
+the knives,' said Dicky Perrott, in perfunctory repetition of the old
+formula.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Weech seemed taken aback. 'Wot, that?' he asked, doubtfully, pointing
+at the doormat. Then, after a sharp look about the almost deserted
+street, he ran to Jago Row corner, twenty yards away, and looked down
+there. Nobody was hiding, and he came back. He led the way into the
+shop, and closed the door. Then, looking keenly in Dicky's face, he
+suddenly asked,&mdash;''Oo toldjer to bring that 'ere?'</p>
+
+<p>'Told me?' Dicky answered sullenly. 'Nobody told me. Don'cher want it?'</p>
+
+<p>''Ow much did 'e tell ye t'ask for it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me? 'Oo?'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>You</i> know. 'Ow much didjer say 'e said?'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky was mystified. 'Dunno wotcher mean,' he replied.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Weech suddenly broke into a loud laugh, but kept his keen look on the
+boy's face nevertheless. 'Ah, it's a good joke, Dicky, ain't it?' he
+said, and laughed again. 'But you can't 'ave me, ye know! Mr Grinder's a
+old friend o' mine, an' I know 'is little larks. Wot did 'e tell ye to
+do if I wouldn't 'ave that doormat?'</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me?' asked Dicky, plainly more mystified than ever. 'Wy 'e never
+told me nothink. 'E gimme the sack this afternoon, an' chucked me out.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then wotcher got yer apron on now for?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh,' said Dicky, looking down at it, 'I jist put it on agin&mdash;o'
+purpose.' And he glanced at the mat.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Weech understood, and grinned&mdash;a genuine grin this time. 'That's
+right Dicky,' he said, 'never let yer wits go a-ramblin'. A sharp boy
+like you's a lot too good for a shop-boy, slavin' away from mornin' till
+night, an' treated ungrateful. Wot did 'e sack ye for?'</p>
+
+<p>'I dunno. Took a fit in 'is 'ead, I s'pose. Wotcher goin' to gimme for
+this mat? It's a two an' three mat.'</p>
+
+<p>'Want somethink to eat, doncher?' suggested Mr Weech, glancing at a heap
+of stale cake.</p>
+
+<p>'No I don't,' Dicky answered, with sulky resolution. 'I want money.'</p>
+
+<p>'Awright,' said Mr Weech, resignedly. 'You ain't 'ad much to eat an'
+drink 'ere for a long time, though. But I'll do the 'an'some, seein'
+you're bin treated ungrateful by Grinder. 'Ere's twopence.'</p>
+
+<p>But Dicky held to the mat. 'Twopence ain't enough,' he said. 'I want
+fourpence.' He meant to spare nobody&mdash;not even Mr Weech.</p>
+
+<p>'Wot? Fourpence?' gasped Mr Weech indignantly. 'Wy, you're mad. Take it
+away.'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky rolled the mat under his arm and turned to the door.</p>
+
+<p>''Ere,' said Mr Weech, seeing him going, 'I'll make it thrippence,
+seein' you're bin treated so bad. Thrippence&mdash;<i>and</i> a slice o' cake,' he
+added, perceiving that Dicky did not hesitate.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't want no cake,' Dicky answered doggedly. 'I want fourpence, an'
+I won't take no less.'</p>
+
+<p>The good Weech was unwilling that Dicky should find another market after
+all, so he submitted to the extortion. 'Ah well,' he said, with a sigh,
+pulling out the extra coppers, 'jist for this once, then. You'll ave to
+make it up next time. Mindjer, it's on'y 'cos I'm sorry for ye bein'
+treated ungrateful. Don't <i>you</i> go an' treat <i>me</i> ungrateful, now.'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky pocketed his pence and made for home, while Mr Weech, chuckling
+gently at his morning prophecy of a doormat for fourpence, carried the
+plunder to the room reserved for new and unused stock; promising
+himself, however, a peep at Grinder's shop in the morning, to make quite
+sure that Dicky had really left.</p>
+
+<p>So ended Dicky's dealings with the house of Grinder. When Father Sturt
+next saw the oil-man, and inquired of Dicky's progress, he was met with
+solemn congratulations that no larcenies were to pay for. Mr Grinder's
+sagacity, it seemed, had enabled him to detect and crush at the outset
+Dicky's plans for selling stock wholesale on his own account. Out of
+consideration for the vicar's recommendation he had refrained from
+handing the boy over to the police, but had paid him a week in advance
+and dismissed him. Father Sturt insisted on repaying the money, and
+went his way with a heavy heart. For if this were what came of the
+promising among his flock, what of the others? For some while he saw
+nothing of Dicky; and the incident fell back among a crowd of others in
+his remembrance: for Dicky was but one among thousands, and the
+disappointment was but one of many hundreds.</p>
+
+<p>Lying awake that night, but with closed eyes, Dicky heard his mother,
+talking with his father, suggest that perhaps an enemy had earwigged
+Grinder, and told him a tale that had brought about Dicky's dismissal:
+somebody, perhaps, who wanted the situation for somebody else. Josh
+Perrott did no more than grunt at the guess, but it gave a new light to
+Dicky. Clearly that would account for Grinder's change. But who could
+the mischief-maker be?</p>
+
+<p>The little clock on the mantel-piece ticked away busily in the silence,
+and Dicky instantly thought of the hunchback. He it must have been,
+without a doubt. Who else? Was he not hanging about the shop, staring
+and sneering, but a day or two back? And was it not he who had pursued
+him with malice on every occasion, in school and out? Had not Bobby
+Roper this very trick of lying tales? Where was the gratuitous injury in
+all these four years that had not been Bobby Roper's work? Dicky
+trembled with rage as he lay, and he resolved on condign revenge. The
+war with Dove Lane was over for the time being, but that made it easier
+for him to catch his enemy.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXII" id="XXII"></a>XXII</h2>
+
+
+<p>The feud between the Jago and Dove Lane was eternal, just as was that
+between the Ranns and the Learys; but, like the Rann and Leary feud, it
+had its paroxysms and its intervals. And, in both cases, the close of a
+paroxysm was signalised by a great show of amity between the factions.
+Bob Rann and Billy Leary would drink affably from the same pot, and
+Norah Walsh and Sally Green would call each other 'mum'; while Jagos and
+Dove-Laners would mingle in bars and lend pinches of tobacco, and call
+each other 'matey.' A paroxysm in the war had now passed, and
+reconciliation was due. The Dove-Laners had been heavily thrashed: their
+benjamins and kicksies had been impounded in Meakin Street, and they had
+ceased from buying. Dove Lane itself had been swept from end to end by
+the victorious Jago, and the populations of both were dotted thickly
+with bandaged heads. This satisfactory state of things achieved, there
+was little reason left for fighting. Moreover, if fighting persisted too
+long at a time, the police were apt to turn up in numbers, subjecting
+the neighbourhood to much inconvenient scrutiny, and very often coming
+across Jagos&mdash;or even Dove-Laners&mdash;'wanted' on old accounts. So peace
+was declared; and, as a visible sign thereof, it was determined that the
+Dove-Laners should visit the Jago in a body, there to join in a
+sing-song at Mother Gapp's. Mother Gapp's was chosen, not only because
+it <i>was</i> Mother Gapp's&mdash;an important consideration&mdash;but also because of
+the large room behind the bar, called the 'club-room,' which had long
+ago been made of two rooms and a big cupboard, by the cutting away of
+crazy partitions from the crazy walls.</p>
+
+<p>Scarce was it dark when the Dove-Laners, in a succession of hilarious
+groups&mdash;but withal a trifle suspicious&mdash;began to push through Mother
+Gapp's doors. Their caps pulled down to their ears, their hands in their
+pockets, their shoulders humped, and their jackets buttoned tight, they
+lurched through the Jago, grinning with uneasy affability at the
+greetings that met them, being less practised than the Jagos in the
+assumption of elaborate cordiality.</p>
+
+<p>In the club-room of the Feathers there were but three or four of the
+other party, though the bar was packed. The three or four, of whom Josh
+Perrott was one, were by way of a committee of stewards deputed to bid
+the Dove-Laners welcome, and to help them to seats. The Jagos were in
+some sort in the situation of hosts, and it had been decided after
+debate that it would ill become them to take their places till their
+guests were seated. The punctilio of the Jago on such occasions was a
+marvel ever.</p>
+
+<p>So Josh Perrott stood at one side of the club-room door and Billy Leary
+at the other, shaking hands with all who entered, and strenuously
+maintaining cheerful grins. Now the Jago smile was a smile by itself,
+unlike the smiles in other places. It faded suddenly, and left the
+face&mdash;the Jago face&mdash;drawn and sad and startling by contrast, as of a
+man betrayed into mirth in the midst of great sorrow. So that a
+persistent grin was known for a work of conscious effort.</p>
+
+<p>The Dove-Laners came in still larger numbers than had been expected, and
+before long it was perceived that there would be little space in the
+club-room, if any at all, for the Jagos. Already the visitors seemed to
+fill the place, but they still kept coming, and found places by
+squeezing. There was some doubt as to what had best be done. Meanwhile
+the sing-song began, for at least a score were anxious to 'oblige' at
+once, and every moment fresh volunteers arose. Many Dove-Laners stood
+up, and so made more room; but more came, and still more, till the
+club-room could hold not another, and the very walls were like to burst.
+Under the low ceiling hung a layer of smoke that obscured the face of
+the man standing on the table at the end to sing; and under the smoke
+was a close-packed array of heads, hats, and clay pipes, much
+diversified by white bandages and black eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Such Dove-Laners as came in now were fain to find places in the bar, if
+they could; and a crowd of Jagos, men and women, hung about the doors of
+the Feathers. More fortunate than other boys, Dicky, who would go
+anywhere to hear what purported to be music, had succeeded in worming
+himself through the bar and almost to the door of the club-room; but he
+could get no farther, and now he stood compressed, bounded on the face
+by Cocko Harnwell's coat-tails, and on the back of the head by Fluffy
+Pike's moleskin waistcoat, with pearlies down the front and the artful
+dodge over the pockets. Pud Palmer&mdash;one of the reception committee&mdash;was
+singing. He accompanied his chorus by a step dance, and all the company
+stamped in sympathy:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'<i>She's a fighter, she's a biter, she's a swearer, she's a tearer,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>The gonophs down aar alley they calls 'er Rorty Sal;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>But as I'm a pertikiler sort o' bloke, I calls 'er Rorty <span class="smcap">Sairer</span>,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>I'm goin'</i>&mdash;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Crack!&mdash;<span class="smcap">Crash!</span></p>
+
+<p>Dicky clung to Cocko Harnwell's coat-tails lest he were trampled to
+death; and for a while he was flung about, crushed and bruised, among
+rushing men, like a swimmer among breakers, while the air was rent with
+howls and the smash of glass. For the club-room floor had given way.</p>
+
+<p>It had been built but slightly in the beginning, as floor for two small
+rooms and a cupboard, with little weight to carry. Old and rotten now,
+and put to the strain of a multitude, stamping in unison, it had failed
+utterly, and had let down a struggling mob of men five feet on the
+barrels in the cellar, panic-stricken and jumbled with tables, pots,
+wooden forms, lighted pipes and splintered joinery.</p>
+
+<p>From the midst of the stramash a Dove-Laner bawled aloud that it was a
+trap, and instantly Jagos and Dove-Laners were at each others' throats,
+and it was like to go hard with the few Jagos among the ruins. Billy
+Leary laid about him desperately with a ragged piece of flooring, while
+Josh Perrott and Pud Palmer battered Dove-Laners with quart pots. Then
+it was shouted without that the Dove-Laners were exterminating the
+Jagos within, and a torrent of Jagos burst through the doors, poured
+through the bar, and over the club-room threshold into the confusion
+below.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky, bruised, frightened and flung like a rag this way and that, at
+last made shift to grasp a post, and climb up on the bar counter. Mother
+Gapp, a dishevelled maniac, was dancing amid pots and broken glass,
+black in the face, screaming inaudibly. Dicky stumbled along the
+counter, climbed over the broken end of a partition, and fell into the
+arms of Kiddo Cook, coming in with the rush. 'Put the boy out!' yelled
+Kiddo, turning and heaving him over the heads behind him. Somebody
+caught Dicky by a leg and an arm, his head hit the door post, the world
+turned a double-somersault about him, and he came down with a crash. He
+was on the flags of Old Jago Street, with all his breath driven out of
+him.</p>
+
+<p>But he was quickly on his feet again. A crowd beat against the front of
+Mother Gapp's, and reinforcements came running from everywhere, with the
+familiar rallying-cry, 'Jago! Jago 'old tight!' Dove Lane had abused
+the Jago hospitality; woe to the Dove-Laners!</p>
+
+<p>There were scuffles here and there, where Dove-Laners, who had never
+reached the club-room, or who had been crowded out of it, made for
+escape. Dicky was shaken and sore, but he pulled himself together
+resolutely. He had seen a few Dove Lane boys about before he had got
+into the Feathers, and plainly it was his duty to find them and bash
+them. Moreover, he wondered what had become of his father. He hastened
+through the dark passage of the house next to Mother Gapp's, into the
+back yard, and through the broken fence. There was a door in the
+club-room wall, and through this he thought to see what was going
+forward.</p>
+
+<p>The cellar&mdash;at any rate, at the farther end&mdash;was a pit of writhing
+forms, and the din rose loud as ever. A short figure stood black against
+the light, and held by the door-post, looking down at the riot. Dicky
+knew it. He sprang at Bobby Roper, pulled him by the arm, and struck at
+him furiously. The hunchback, whimpering, did his best to retaliate and
+to get away; but Dicky, raging at the remembrance of his fancied
+injury, struck savagely, and struck again, till Bobby Roper tripped
+backward over the projecting end of a broken floor-board, and pitched
+headlong into the cellar. He struck a barrel and rolled over, falling
+into the space between that and two other barrels. Dicky looked, but the
+hunchback did not move. Then some of the Dove-Laners flung pots at the
+lamps hanging against the club-room walls. Soon they were smashed and
+fell, and there was a darkness; and under cover thereof the aliens
+essayed flight.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky was a little frightened at what he had done, but he felt that with
+Bobby Roper anything was justifiable. Some Dove-Laners escaped by the
+back door&mdash;the cellar was low, and there was not five feet between the
+barrels and the broken joists&mdash;and these Dicky avoided by getting back
+through the fence. In the end, most of the enemy struggled away by one
+means or another, and when lights were brought at last the Jagos were
+found pummelling each other savagely in the gloom.</p>
+
+<p>Father Sturt, apprised of something uncommon by the exodus of members
+from the club, finally locked the doors and came to investigate. He
+arrived as the Jagos were extricating themselves from the cellar, and it
+was he who lifted the little hunchback from among the barrels and
+carried him into the open air; he also who carried him home. No bone was
+broken, and no joint was disturbed, but there was a serious shock, many
+contusions, and a cut on the scalp. So said the surgeon whom Father
+Sturt took with him to Dove Lane. And Bobby Roper lay a fortnight in
+bed.</p>
+
+<p>More plaster than ever embellished the heads of Dove Lane and the Jago
+that night; but for the Jagos there was compensation. For down among the
+barrels lay many a packet of tobacco, many a pair of boots, and many a
+corner stuffed with mixed property of other sorts: which Mother Gapp had
+fenced for many a month back. So that it happened to more than one
+warrior to carry home again something with which he had run between the
+'Posties' long before, and had sold to Mother Gapp for what she would
+give.</p>
+
+<p>The ground floor of the Feathers stood a battered shell. The damage of
+four years ago was inconsiderable compared to this. With tears and
+blasphemy Mother Gapp invaded the hoard of her long iniquity to buy a
+new floor; but it was the larceny&mdash;the taking of the tobacco and the
+boots, and the many other things from among the barrels&mdash;that cut her to
+the soul. A crool&mdash;a crool thing was such robbery&mdash;sheer robbery, said
+Mother Gapp.</p>
+
+<p>Josh Perrott got a bad sprain in the cellar and had to be helped home.
+More, he took with him not a single piece of plunder, such was his
+painful disablement.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIII" id="XXIII"></a>XXIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>For more than a week Josh Perrott could not walk about. And it was a bad
+week. For some little while his luck had been but poor, and now he found
+himself laid up with a total reserve fund of fourteenpence. A coat was
+pawned with old Poll Rann (who kept a leaving shop in a first floor back
+in Jago Row) for ninepence. Then Josh swore at Dicky for not being still
+at Grinder's, and told him to turn out and bring home some money. Dicky
+had risen almost too sore and stiff to stand, on the morning after the
+fight at the Feathers, and he was little better now. But he had to go,
+and he went, though he well knew that a click was out of the question,
+for his joints almost refused to bend. But he found that the fat's
+a-running boys were contemplating business, and he scouted for them
+with such success as to bring home sevenpence in the evening. Then Kiddo
+Cook, who had left Mother Gapp's with a double armful on the night of
+the sing-song, found himself rich enough, being a bachelor, to lend Josh
+eighteenpence. And a shawl of Hannah Perrott's was pawned. That, though,
+was redeemed the next day, together with the coat. For Dicky brought
+home a golden sovereign.</p>
+
+<p>It had been an easy click&mdash;scarce a click at all, perhaps, strictly
+speaking. Dicky had tramped into the city, and had found a crowd outside
+St Paul's&mdash;a well-dressed crowd, not being moved on: for something was
+going forward in the cathedral. He recognised one of the High Mob, a
+pogue-hunter&mdash;that is a pickpocket who deals in purses. Dicky watched
+this man's movements, by way of education; for he was an eminent
+practitioner, and worked alone, with no assistant to cover him. Dicky
+saw him in the thick of the crowd, standing beside and behind one lady
+after another; but it was only when his elbow bent to slip something
+into his own pocket that Dicky knew he had 'touched.' Presently he
+moved to another part of the crowd, where mostly men were standing, and
+there he stealthily let drop a crumpled newspaper, and straightway left
+the crowd. He had 'worked' it as much as he judged safe. Dicky wriggled
+toward the crumpled paper, slipped it under his jacket, and cleared away
+also. He knew that there was something in the paper beside news: that,
+in fact, there were purses in it&mdash;purses emptied and shed as soon as
+might be, because nobody can swear to money, but strange purses lead to
+destruction. Dicky recked little of this danger, but made his best pace
+to a recess in a back street, there to examine his pogues; for though
+the uxter was gone from them, they might yet bring a few coppers from Mr
+Weech, if they were of good quality. They were a fairly sound lot. One
+had a large clasp that looked like silver, and another was quite new,
+and Dicky was observing with satisfaction the shop-shininess of the
+lining, when he perceived a cunning pocket at the back, lying flat
+against the main integument&mdash;and in it was a sovereign! He gulped at the
+sight. Clearly the pogue-hunter, emptying the pogues in his pocket by
+sense of touch, had missed the flat pocket. Dicky was not yet able to
+run with freedom, but he never ceased from trotting till he reached his
+own staircase in Old Jago Street. And so the eight or nine days passed,
+and Josh went out into the Jago with no more than a tenderness about his
+ankle.</p>
+
+<p>Now, he much desired a good click; so he went across High Street
+Shoreditch, to Kingsland Railway Station and bought a ticket for
+Canonbury.</p>
+
+<p>Luck was against him, it was plain. He tramped the northern suburbs from
+three o'clock till dark, but touched for nothing. He spent money,
+indeed, for he feared to overwork his ankle, and for that reason rested
+in divers public-houses. He peeped in at the gates of quiet gardens, in
+the hope of garden-hose left unwatched, or tennis-rackets lying in a
+handy summer-house. But he saw none. He pried about the doors of private
+stable-yards, in case of absent grooms and unprotected bunches of
+harness; but in vain. He inspected quiet areas and kitchen entrances in
+search of unguarded spoons&mdash;even descended into one area, where he had
+to make an awkward excuse about buying old bottles, in consequence of
+meeting the cook at the door. He tramped one quiet road after another on
+the look out for a dead 'un&mdash;a house furnished, but untenanted. But
+there was never a dead 'un, it seemed, in all the northern district. So
+he grew tired and short-tempered, and cursed himself for that he had not
+driven off with a baker's horse and cart that had tempted him early in
+the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>It grew twilight, and then dark. Josh sat in a public-house, and took a
+long rest and some bread and cheese. It would never do to go home
+without touching, and for some time he considered possibilities with
+regard to a handful of silver money, kept in a glass on a shelf behind
+the bar. But it was out of reach, and there were too many people in the
+place for any attempt by climbing on the counter. Josh grew savage and
+soured. Plastering itself was not such troublesome work; and at least
+the pay was certain. It was little short of ten o'clock when he left
+the public-house and turned back toward Canonbury. He would have
+<i>something</i> on the way, he resolved, and he would catch the first train
+home. He would have to knock somebody over in a dark street, that was
+all. It was nothing new, but he would rather have made his click another
+way this time, because his tender ankle might keep him slow, or even
+give way altogether; and to be caught in a robbery with violence might
+easily mean something more than mere imprisonment; it might mean a dose
+of the 'cat': and the cat was a thing the thought or the mention whereof
+sent shudders through the Old Jago.</p>
+
+<p>But no: nobody worth knocking down came his way. Truly luck was out
+to-night. There was a spot by the long garden wall of a corner house
+that would have suited admirably, and as Josh lingered there, and looked
+about him, his eye fell on a ladder, reared nearly upright against the
+back wall of that same corner house, and lashed at the roof. It passed
+by the side of the second floor window, whereof the top sash was a
+little open. That would do. It was not his usual line of work, but it
+looked very promising.</p>
+
+<p>He stuck his stick under his waistcoat by way of the collar, and climbed
+the wall with gingerly care, giving his sound foot all the hard work.
+The ladder offered no difficulty, but the bottom sash of the window was
+stiff, and he cracked a pane of glass in pushing at the frame with his
+stick. The sash lifted, however, in the end, and he climbed into the
+dark room, being much impeded by the dressing-table. All was quiet in
+the house, and the ticking of a watch on the dressing-table was distinct
+in the ear. Josh felt for it and found it, with a chain hanging from the
+bow.</p>
+
+<p>The house was uncommonly quiet. Could it possibly be a dead 'un after
+all? Josh felt that he ought to have inspected the front windows before
+climbing the wall, but the excitement of the long-delayed chance had
+ruined his discretion. At any rate he would reconnoitre. The door was
+ajar and the landing was dark.</p>
+
+<p>Down in the drawing-room a gross, pimply man, in shirt-sleeves and
+socks, sat up on the sofa at the sound of an opened window higher in
+the house. He took a drink from the glass by his side, and listened.
+Then he rose and went softly upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>Josh Perrott came out on the landing. It was a long landing, with a
+staircase at the end, illuminated from somewhere below: so that it was
+not a case of a dead 'un after all. He tip-toed along to take a look
+down the stairs, nevertheless. Then he was conscious of a loud
+breathing, as of an over-gorged cow, and up behind the stair-rails rose
+a fat head, followed by a fat trunk, between white shirt-sleeves.</p>
+
+<p>Josh sank into the shadow. The man had no light, but discover him he
+must, sooner or later, for the landing was narrow. Better sooner, and
+suddenly. As the man's foot was on the topmost stair, Josh sprang at him
+with a straight left-hander that took him on the broad chin, and sent
+him downstairs in a heap, with a crash and a roar. Josh darted back to
+the room he had just left, scrambled through the window, and slid down
+the ladder, as he had slid down many another when he was a plasterer's
+boy. He checked himself short of the bottom, sprang at the wall-coping,
+flung himself over, and ran up the dark by-street, with the sound of
+muffled roars and screams faint in his ears.</p>
+
+<p>He ran a street or two, taking every corner as he came to it, and then
+fell into a walk. In his flight he had not spared his ankle, and now it
+was painful. Moreover, he had left his stick behind him, in the bedroom.
+But he was in Highbury, and Canonbury Road Station was less than half a
+mile away. He grinned silently as he went, for there was something in
+the aspect of the overfed householder, and in the manner of his
+downfall, that gave the adventure a comic flavour. He took a peep at his
+spoil as he passed under a street lamp, for all watches and chains are
+the same in the dark, and the thing might be a mere Waterbury on a steel
+guard. But no: both were gold, and heavy: a red clock and slang if ever
+there was one. And so Josh Perrott hobbled and chuckled his way home.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIV" id="XXIV"></a>XXIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>But indeed Josh Perrott's luck was worse than he thought. For the gross,
+pimply man was a High Mobsman&mdash;so very high a mobsman that it would have
+been slander and libel, and a very great expense, to write him down a
+mobsman at all. He paid a rent of a hundred and twenty pounds a year,
+and heavy rates, and put half-a-crown into the plate at a very
+respectable chapel every Sunday. He was, in fact, the King of High
+Mobsmen, spoken of among them as the Mogul. He did no vulgar thievery:
+he never screwed a chat, nor claimed a peter, nor worked the mace. He
+sat easily at home, and financed (sometimes planned) promising
+speculations: a large swindle requiring much ground-baiting and
+preliminary outlay; or a robbery of specie from a mail train; or a bank
+fraud needing organization and funds. When the results of such
+speculations consisted of money he took the lion's share. When they were
+expressed in terms of imprisonment they fell to active and intelligent
+subordinates. So that for years the Mogul had lived an affluent and a
+blameless life, far removed from the necessity of injudicious bodily
+exercise, and characterised by every indulgence consistent with a proper
+suburban respectability. He had patronised, snubbed, or encouraged High
+Mobsmen of more temerarious habit, had profited by their exploits, and
+had read of their convictions and sentences with placid interest in the
+morning papers. And after all this, to be robbed in his own house and
+knocked downstairs by a casual buster was an outrage that afflicted the
+Mogul with wrath infuriate. Because that was a sort of trouble that had
+never seemed a possibility, to a person of his eminence: and because the
+angriest victim of dishonesty is a thief.</p>
+
+<p>However, the burglar had got clean away, that was plain; and he had
+taken the best watch and chain in the house, with the Mogul's initials
+on the back. So that respectable sufferer sent for the police, and gave
+his attention to the the alleviation of bumps and the washing away of
+blood. In his bodily condition a light blow was enough to let a great
+deal of blood&mdash;no doubt with benefit; and Josh Perrott's blows were not
+light in any case.</p>
+
+<p>So it came to pass that not only were the police on the look-out for a
+man with a large gold watch with the Mogul's monogram on the back; but
+also the word was passed as by telegraph through underground channels,
+till every fence in London was warned that the watch was the Mogul's;
+and ere noon next day there was not one but would as lief have put a
+scorpion in his pocket as that same toy and tackle that Josh Perrott was
+gloating over in his back room in Old Jago Street.</p>
+
+<p>As for Josh, his ankle was bad in the morning, and swelled. He dabbed at
+it perseveringly with wet rags, and rubbed it vigorously, so that by one
+o'clock he was able to lace up his boot and go out. He was anxious to
+fence his plunder without delay, and he made his way to Hoxton. The
+watch seemed to be something especially good, and he determined to stand
+out for a price well above the usual figure. For the swag of common
+thieves commanded no such prices as did that of the High Mob. All of it
+was bought and sold on the simple system first called into being seventy
+years back and more by the prince of fences, Ikey Solomons. A breast-pin
+brought a fixed sum, good or bad, and a roll of cloth brought the fixed
+price of a roll of cloth, regardless of quality. Thus a silver watch
+fetched six shillings, never more and never less; a gold watch was worth
+twice as much; an uncommonly good one&mdash;a rich man's watch&mdash;would bring
+as much as eighteen shillings, if the thief were judge enough of its
+quality to venture the demand. And as it commonly took three men to
+secure a single watch in the open street&mdash;one to 'front,' one to snatch,
+and a third to take from the snatcher&mdash;the gains of the toy-getting
+trade were poor, except to the fence. This time Josh resolved to put
+pressure on the fence, and to do his best to get something as near a
+sovereign as might be. And as to the chain, so thick and heavy, he would
+fight his best for the privilege of sale by weight. Thus turning the
+thing in his mind, he entered the familiar doorway of the old clothes
+shop.</p>
+
+<p>'Vot is id?' asked the fence, holding out his hand with the customary
+air of contempt for what was coming, by way of discounting it in
+advance. This particular fence, by-the-bye, never bought anything
+himself. He inspected whatever was brought on behalf of an occult
+friend; and the transaction was completed by a shabby third party in an
+adjoining court. But he had an amazingly keen regard for his friend's
+interests.</p>
+
+<p>Josh put the watch into the extended hand. The fence lifted it to his
+face, turned it over, and started. He looked hard at Josh, and then
+again at the watch, and handed it hastily back, holding it gingerly by
+the bow. 'Don' vant <i>dot</i>,' he said; 'nod me&mdash;nod 'im, I mean. No, no.'
+He turned away, shaking his hand as though to throw off contamination.
+'Take id avay.'</p>
+
+<p>'Wot's the matter?' Josh demanded, astonished. 'Is it 'cos o' the
+letters on the back? You can easy send it to church, can't ye?'</p>
+
+<p>A watch is 'sent to church' when it is put into another case. But the
+fence waved away the suggestion. 'Take id avay I tell you,' he said.
+'I&mdash;'e von't 'ave nodden to do vid id.'</p>
+
+<p>'Wot's the matter with the chain, then?' asked Josh. But the fence
+walked away to the back of the shop, wagging his hands desperately, like
+a wet man seeking a towel, and repeating only:&mdash;'Nodden to do vid
+id&mdash;take id avay&mdash;nodden to do vid id.'</p>
+
+<p>Josh stuffed his prize back into his pocket, and regained the street. He
+was confounded. What was wrong with Cohen? Did he suspect a police trick
+to entrap him? Josh snorted with indignation at the thought. He was no
+nark! But perhaps the police were showing a pressing interest in Cohen's
+business concerns just now, and he had suspended fencing for a while.
+The guess was a lame one, but he could think of none better at the
+moment, as he pushed his way to the Jago. He would try Mother Gapp.</p>
+
+<p>Mother Gapp would not even take the watch in her hands; her eyes were
+good enough at that distance. 'Lor', Josh Perrott,' she said, 'wot 'a'
+ye bin up to now? Want to git me lagged now, do ye? Ain't satisfied with
+breakin' up the 'ouse an' ruinin' a pore widder that way, ain't ye? You
+git out, go on. I 'ad 'nough o' you!'</p>
+
+<p>It was very extraordinary. Was there a general reclamation of fences?
+But there were men at work at the Feathers, putting down boards and
+restoring partitions; and two of them had been 'gone over' ruinously on
+their way to work, and now they came and went with four policemen.
+Possibly Mother Gapp feared the observation of carpenters. Be it as it
+might, there was nothing for it now but Weech's.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Weech was charmed. 'Dear me, it's a wonderful fine watch, Mr
+Perrott&mdash;a wonderful fine watch. An' a beautiful chain.' But he was
+looking narrowly at the big monogram as he said it. 'It's reely a
+wonderful article. 'Ow they do git 'em up, to be sure! Cost a lot o'
+money too, I'll be bound. Might you be thinkin' o' sellin' it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yus o' course,' replied Josh. 'That's wot I brought it for.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, it's a lovely watch, Mr Perrott&mdash;a lov-erly watch; an' the chain
+matches it. But you mustn't be too 'ard on me. Shall we say four pound
+for the little lot?'</p>
+
+<p>It was more than double Josh's wildest hopes, but he wanted all he could
+get. 'Five,' he said doggedly.</p>
+
+<p>Weech gazed at him with tender rebuke. 'Five pound's a awful lot o'
+money, Mr Perrott,' he said. 'You're too 'ard on me, reely. I 'ardly
+know 'ow I can scrape it up. But it's a beautiful little lot, an' I
+won't 'aggle. But I ain't got all that money in the 'ouse now. I never
+keep so much money in the 'ouse&mdash;sich a neighb'r'ood, Mr Perrott! Bring
+it round to-morrer mornin' at eleven.'</p>
+
+<p>'Awright, I'll come. Five quid, mind.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah yus,' answered Mr Weech, with a reproving smile. 'It's reely more
+than I ought!'</p>
+
+<p>Josh was jubilant, and forgot his sore ankle. He had never handled such
+a sum as five pounds since his fight with Billy Leary, years ago; when,
+indeed, he had stooped to folly in the shape of lavish treating, and so
+had not enjoyed the handling of the full amount.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Weech, also, was pleased. For it was a great stroke of business to
+oblige so distinguished a person as the Mogul. There was no telling what
+advantages it might not lead to in the way of trade.</p>
+
+<p>That night the Perrotts had a hot supper, brought from Walker's
+cook-shop in paper. And at eleven the next morning Josh, twenty yards
+from Mr Weech's door, with the watch and chain in his pocket, was tapped
+on the arm by a constable in plain clothes, while another came up on the
+other side. 'Mornin', Perrott,' said the first constable, cheerily.
+'We've got a little business with you at the station.'</p>
+
+<p>'Me? Wot for?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh well, come along; p'raps it ain't anything&mdash;unless there's a gold
+watch an' chain on you, from Highbury. It's just a turnin' over.'</p>
+
+<p>'Awright,' replied Josh, resignedly. 'It's a fair cop. I'll go quiet.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's right, Perrott; it ain't no good playin' the fool, you know.'
+They were moving along; and as they came by Weech's shop, a whiskered
+face, with a patch of shining scalp over it, peeped from behind a
+curtain that hung at the rear of the bloaters and plumcake in the
+window. As he saw it, Josh ducked suddenly, wrenching his arm free, and
+dashed over the threshold. Mr Weech, whiskers and apron flying, galloped
+through the door at the back, and the constables sprang upon Josh
+instantly and dragged him into the street. 'Wotcher mean?' cried the one
+who knew him, indignantly, and with a significant glance at the other.
+'Call that goin' quiet?'</p>
+
+<p>Josh's face was white and staring with rage. 'Awright,' he grunted
+through his shut teeth, after a pause. 'I'll go quiet now. I ain't got
+nothin' agin <i>you</i>.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXV" id="XXV"></a>XXV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Dicky's morning theft that day had been but a small one&mdash;he had run off
+with a new two-foot rule that a cabinet-maker had carelessly left on an
+unfinished office table at his shop door in Curtain Road. It was not
+much, but it might fetch some sort of a dinner at Weech's, which would
+be better than going home, and, perhaps, finding nothing. So about noon,
+all ignorant of his father's misfortune, he came by way of Holywell Lane
+and Bethnal Green Road to Meakin Street.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Weech looked at him rather oddly, Dicky fancied, when he came in, but
+he took the two-foot rule with alacrity, and brought Dicky a rasher of
+bacon, and a slice of cake afterward. This seemed very generous. More:
+Mr Weech's manner was uncommonly amiable, and when the meal was over, of
+his own motion, he handed over a supplementary penny. Dicky was
+surprised; but he had no objection, and he thought little more about it.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he appeared in Luck Row he was told that his father had been
+'smugged.' Indeed the tidings had filled the Jago within ten minutes.
+Josh Perrott was walking quietly along Meakin Street,&mdash;so went the
+news,&mdash;when up comes Snuffy and another split, and smugs him. Josh had a
+go for Weech's door, to cut his lucky out at the back, but was caught.
+That was a smart notion of Josh's, the Jago opinion ran, to get through
+Weech's and out into the courts behind. But it was no go.</p>
+
+<p>Hannah Perrott sat in her room, inert and lamenting. Dicky could not
+rouse her, and at last he went off by himself to reconnoitre about
+Commercial Street Police Station, and pick up what information he might;
+while a gossip or two came and took Mrs Perrott for consolation to
+Mother Gapp's. Little Em, unwashed, tangled and weeping, could well take
+care of herself and the room, being more than two years old.</p>
+
+<p>Josh Perrott would be brought up to-morrow, Dicky ascertained, at the
+North London Police Court. So the next morning found Dicky trudging
+moodily along the two miles of flags to Stoke Newington Road; while his
+mother and three sympathising friends, who foresaw an opportunity for
+numerous tiny drops with interesting circumstances to flavour them, took
+a penny cast on the way in a tramcar.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky, with some doubt as to the disposition of the door-keeping
+policeman toward ragged boys, waited for the four women, and contrived
+to pass in unobserved among them. Several Jagos were in the court,
+interested not only in Josh's adventure, but in one of Cocko Harnwell's,
+who had indulged, the night before, in an animated little scramble with
+three policemen in Dalston; and they waited with sympathetic interest
+while the luck was settled of a long string of drunk-and-disorderlies.</p>
+
+<p>At last Josh was brought in, and lurched composedly into the dock, in
+the manner of one who knew the routine. The police gave evidence of
+arrest, in consequence of information received, and of finding the
+watch and chain in Josh's trousers pocket. The prosecutor, with his head
+conspicuously bedight with sticking-plaster, puffed and grunted up into
+the witness-box, kissed the book, and was a 'retired commission agent.'
+He positively identified the watch and chain, and he not less positively
+identified Josh Perrott, whom he had picked out from a score of men in
+the police-yard. This would have been a feat indeed for a man who had
+never seen Josh, and had only once encountered his fist in the dark, had
+it not been for the dutiful though private aid of Mr Weech: who, in
+giving his information had described Josh and his one suit of clothes
+with great fidelity, especially indicating a scar on the right
+cheek-bone which would mark him among a thousand. The retired commission
+agent was quite sure of the prisoner. He had met him on the stairs,
+where there was plenty of light from a lamp, and the prisoner had
+attacked him savagely, beating him about the head and flinging him
+downstairs. The policeman called by the prosecutor's servant deposed to
+finding the prosecutor bruised and bleeding. There was a ladder against
+the back of the house; a bedroom window had been opened; there were
+muddy marks on the sill; and he had found the stick&mdash;produced&mdash;lying in
+the bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>Josh leaned easily on the rail before him while evidence was being
+given, and said 'No, yer worship,' whenever he was asked if he desired
+to question a witness. He knew better than to run the risk of
+incriminating himself by challenging the prosecutor's well-coloured
+evidence; and, as it was a certain case of committal for trial, it would
+have been useless in any event. He made the same reply when he was asked
+if he had anything to say before being committed: and straightway was
+'fullied.' He lurched serenely out of the dock, waving his cap at his
+friends in the court, and that was all. The Jagos waited till Cocko
+Harnwell got his three months and then retired to neighbouring
+public-houses; but Dicky remembered his little sister, and hurried home.</p>
+
+<p>The month's session at the Old Bailey had just begun, so that Josh had
+no long stay at Holloway. Among the Jagos it was held to be a most
+creditable circumstance that Josh was to take his trial with full
+honours at the Old Bailey, and not at mere County Sessions at
+Clerkenwell, like a simple lob-crawler or peter-claimer. For Josh's was
+a case of burglary with serious violence, such as was fitting for the
+Old Bailey, and not even a High Mobsman could come to trial with greater
+glory. 'As like as not it's laggin' dues, after 'is other convictions,'
+said Bill Rann. And Jerry Gullen thought so too.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky went, with his mother and Em, to see Josh at Newgate. They stood
+with other visitors, very noisy, before a double iron railing covered
+with wire-netting, at the farther side whereof stood Josh and other
+prisoners, while a screaming hubbub of question and answer filled the
+air. Josh had little to say. He lounged against the farther railing with
+his hands in his pockets, asked what Cocko Harnwell had got, and sent a
+message to Bill Rann. While his wife did little more than look dolefully
+through the wires, and pipe:&mdash;'Oh, Josh, wotever shall I do?' at
+intervals, with no particular emotion; while Em pressed her smudgy
+little face against the wires, and stared mightily; and while Dicky felt
+that if he had been younger he would have cried. When time was up, Josh
+waved his hand and slouched off, and his family turned out with the
+rest: little Em carrying into later years a memory of father as a man
+who lived in a cage.</p>
+
+<p>In such a case as this, the Jago would have been for ever disgraced if
+Josh Perrott's pals had neglected to get up a 'break' or subscription to
+pay for his defence. Things were never very flourishing in the Jago. But
+this was the sort of break a Jago could not shirk, lest it were
+remembered against him when his own turn came. So enough was collected
+to brief an exceedingly junior counsel, who did his useless best. But
+the facts were too strong even for the most inexperienced advocate; the
+evidence of the prosecutor was nowhere to be shaken, and the jury found
+a verdict of guilty without leaving the box&mdash;indeed, with scarce the
+formality of collecting their heads together over the rails. Then Josh's
+past was most unpleasantly raked up before him. He had been convicted
+of larceny, of assaulting the police, and of robbery with violence.
+There were two sentences of six months' imprisonment recorded against
+him, one of three months, and two of a month. Besides fines. The
+Recorder considered it a very serious offence. Not deterred by the
+punishments he had already received, the prisoner had proceeded to a
+worse crime&mdash;burglary; and with violence. It was plain that lenience was
+wasted in such a case, and simple imprisonment was not enough. There
+must be an exemplary sentence. The prisoner must be kept in penal
+servitude for five years.</p>
+
+<p>Lagging dues it was, as Bill Rann had anticipated. That Josh Perrott
+agreed with him was suggested by the fact that from the very beginning
+he described himself as a painter; because a painter in prison is apt to
+be employed at times in painting&mdash;a lighter and a more desirable task
+than falls to the lot of his fellows in other trades.</p>
+
+<p>In a room by the court Josh saw his wife, Dicky, and Bill Rann (Josh's
+brother-in-law for the occasion) before his ride to Holloway, his one
+stopping place on the way to Chelmsford Gaol. Little Em had been left
+sprawling in the Jago gutters. This time Hannah Perrott wept in good
+earnest, and Dicky, notwithstanding his thirteen years, blinked very
+hard at the wall before him. The arrangement of Josh's affairs was
+neither a long nor a difficult labour. 'S'pose you'll 'ave to do wot you
+can with rush bags, an' sacks, and match-boxes, an' wot not,' he said to
+his wife, and she assented. Josh nodded:&mdash;'An' if you 'ave to go in the
+'ouse,'&mdash;he meant the workhouse,&mdash;'well, it can't be 'elped. You won't
+be no wuss auf 'n me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, <i>she'll</i> be awright,' said Bill Rann, jerking his thumb cheerfully
+toward the missis. 'Wot about you? Think they'll make it Parkhurst?'</p>
+
+<p>Josh shook his head moodily. Parkhurst being the prison reserved for
+convicts of less robust habit, he had little hope of enjoying its easier
+conditions. Presently he said:&mdash;'I bin put away this time&mdash;fair put
+away.'</p>
+
+<p>'Wot?' answered Bill, 'narkin' dues is it?'</p>
+
+<p>Josh nodded.</p>
+
+<p>''Oo done it then? 'Oo narked?'</p>
+
+<p>Josh shook his head. 'Never mind,' he said, 'I don't want 'im druv out
+o' the Jago 'fore I come out. I'd be sorry to miss 'im. <i>I</i> know
+'im&mdash;that's enough.'</p>
+
+<p>And then time was up. Josh suffered the missis to kiss him, and shook
+hands with Bill Rann. 'Good luck to all you Jagos,' he said. Dicky shook
+hands too, and said 'Good-bye, father!' in a voice of such laboured
+cheerfulness that a grin burst for a moment amid Josh's moody features
+as he was marched away, and so departed for the place&mdash;in Jago
+idiom&mdash;where the dogs don't bite.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVI" id="XXVI"></a>XXVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was Father Sturt's practice to visit every family in his parish in
+regular order. But small as the parish was&mdash;insignificant, indeed, in
+mere area&mdash;its population exceeded eight thousand: so that the round was
+one of many months, for visiting was but one among innumerable duties.
+But Josh Perrott's lagging secured his family a special call. Not that
+the circumstances were in any way novel or at all uncommon; nor even
+that the vicar had any hope of being able to help. He was but the one
+man who could swim in a howling sea of human wreckage. In the Jago,
+wives like Hannah Perrott, temporarily widowed by the absence of
+husbands 'in the country,' were to be counted in scores, and most were
+in worse case than she, in the matter of dependent children. Father
+Sturt's house-list revealed the fact that in Old Jago Street alone,
+near seventy of the males were at that moment on ticket-of-leave.</p>
+
+<p>In the Perrott case, indeed, the sufferers were fortunate, as things
+went. Mrs Perrott had but herself and the child of two to keep, for
+Dicky could do something, whether good or bad, for himself. The vicar
+might try to get regular work for Dicky, but it would be a vain toil,
+for he must tell an employer what he knew of Dicky's past and of that
+other situation. He could but give the woman the best counsel at his
+command, and do what he might to quicken any latent spark of energy. So
+he did his best, and that was all. The struggle lay with Hannah Perrott.</p>
+
+<p>She had been left before, and more than once; but then the periods had
+been shorter, and, as a matter of fact, things had fallen out so well
+that scarce more than a meal here and there had had to be missed,
+though, when they came, the meals were apt to be but of crusts. And now
+there was more trouble ahead; for though she began her lonely time with
+but one small child on hand, she knew that ere long there would be two.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, she had worked before; not only when Josh had been 'in' but
+at other times, to add to the family resources. She was a clumsy
+needlewoman: else she might hope to earn some ninepence or a shilling a
+day at making shirts, by keeping well to the needle for sixteen hours
+out of the twenty-four; and from the whole sum there would be no
+deductions, except for needles and cotton, and what the frugal employer
+might choose to subtract for work to which he could devise an objection.
+But, as it was, she must do her best to get some sack-making. They paid
+one and sevenpence a hundred for sacks, and, with speed and long hours,
+she could make a hundred in four days. Rush bag-making would bring even
+more, which would be desirable, considering the three-and-sixpence a
+week for rent: which, with the payments for other rooms, made the rent
+of the crazy den in Old Jago Street about equal, space for space, to
+that of a house in Onslow Square. Then there was a more lucrative
+employment still, but one to be looked for at intervals only: one not
+to be counted on at all, in fact, for it was a prize, and many sought
+after it. This was the making of match-boxes. For making one hundred and
+forty-four outside cases with paper label and sandpaper, and the same
+number of trays to slide into them&mdash;a gross of complete boxes, or two
+hundred and eighty-eight pieces in all&mdash;one got twopence farthing;
+indeed, for a special size one even got a farthing a gross more; and all
+the wood and the labels and the sandpaper were provided free: so that
+the fortunate operative lost nothing out of the twopence farthing but
+the cost of the paste, and the string for tying up the boxes into
+regularly numbered batches, and the time employed in fetching the work
+and taking it back again. And if seven gross were to be got, and could
+be done in a day&mdash;and it was really not very difficult for the skilful
+hand who kept at work long enough&mdash;the day's income was one and
+threepence three-farthings, less expenses: still better, that, than the
+shirts. But the work was hard to get. As the public-spirited
+manufacturers complained: people would buy Swedish matches, whereas if
+people would Support Home Industries and buy no matches but theirs, they
+would be able to order many a twopence-farthingsworth of boxes more.</p>
+
+<p>There might be collateral sources of income, but these were doubtful and
+irregular. Probably Dicky would bring in a few coppers now and again.
+Then judicious attendance at churches, chapels and prayer-meetings
+beyond the Jago borders was rewarded by coal-tickets, boots, and the
+like. It was necessary to know just where and when to go and what to
+say, else the sole result might be loss of time. There was a church in
+Bethnal Green, for instance, which it would be foolish to enter before
+the end of the Litany, for then you were in good time to get your
+half-quarter hundredweight of coals; but at other places they might
+object to so late an appearance. Above all, one must know the ropes.
+There were several women in the Jago who made almost a living in this
+way alone. They were experts; they knew every fund, every
+meeting-house, all the comings and goings of the gullible; insomuch that
+they would take black umbrage at any unexpected difficulty in getting
+what they demanded. 'Wy,' one would say, 'I 'ad to pitch sich a bleed'n'
+'oly tale I earned it twice over.' But these were the proficient, and
+proficiency in the trade was an outcome of long experience working on a
+foundation of natural gifts; and Hannah Perrott could never hope to be
+among them.</p>
+
+<p>Turning these things in her mind, she addressed herself to her struggle.
+She managed to get some sacks, but for a week or two she could make
+nothing like twenty-five a day, though Dicky helped. Her fingers got
+raw; but she managed to complete a hundred within the first week. They
+might have been better done, as the employer said when he saw them. But
+she got her full one and sevenpence. She pawned her boots for fourpence,
+and wore two old odd ones of Josh's; and she got twopence on a
+petticoat. Dicky also helped a little; and at the end of a fortnight
+there came a godsend in the shape of material for match-boxes. Mrs
+Perrott was slow with them at first; but Dicky was quick, and even
+little Em began to learn to spread paste.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVII" id="XXVII"></a>XXVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Dicky grew slighter and lanker, dark about the eyes, and weaker. He was
+growing longitudinally, and that made his lateral wasting the quicker
+and the more apparent. A furtive frighted look hung ever in his face, a
+fugitive air about his whole person. His mother's long face was longer
+than ever, and blacker under the eyes than Dicky's own, and her weak
+open mouth hung at the corners as that of a woman faint with weeping.
+Little Em's knees and elbows were knobs in the midst of limbs of
+unnatural length. Rarely could a meal be seen ahead; and when it came,
+it made Dicky doubtful whether or not hunger were really caused by
+eating. But his chief distress was to see that little Em cried not like
+a child, but silently, as she strove to thread needles or to smear
+matchbox labels. And when good fortune brought match-boxes, there was an
+undue loss on the twopence farthing in the matter of paste. The stuff
+was a foul mess, sour and faint, and it was kept in a broken tea-cup,
+near which Dicky had detected his sister sucking her fingers; for in
+truth little Em stole the paste.</p>
+
+<p>On and off, by one way and another, Mrs Perrott made enough to keep the
+rent paid with indifferent regularity, and sometimes there was a copper
+or so left over. She did fairly well, too, at the churches and
+prayer-meetings; people saw her condition, and now and again would give
+her something beyond the common dole; so that she learned the trick of
+looking more miserable than usual at such places.</p>
+
+<p>The roof provided, Dicky felt that his was the task to find food. Alone,
+he might have rubbed along clear of starvation, but there were his
+mother and his sister. Lack of victuals shook his nerve and made him
+timid. Moreover, his terror grew greater than ever at the prospect of
+being caught in a theft. He lay awake at night and sweated to think of
+it. Who would bring in things from the outer world for mother and Em
+then? And the danger was worse than ever. He had felt the police-court
+birch, and it was bad, very bad. But he would take it every day and take
+it almost without a tear, rather than the chance of a reformatory.
+Magistrates were unwilling to send boys to reformatories while both
+father and mother were at hand to control them, for that were relieving
+the parents of their natural responsibility; but in a case like Dicky's,
+a 'schooling' was a very likely thing. So that Dicky, as he prowled, was
+torn between implacable need and the fear of being cut off from all
+chance of supplying it.</p>
+
+<p>It was his rule never to come home without bringing something, were it
+no more than a mildewed crust. It was a resolve impossible to keep at
+times, but at those times it was two in the morning ere he would drag
+himself, pallid and faint, into the dark room where the others might
+be&mdash;probably were&mdash;lying awake and unfed. Rather than face such a
+homecoming he had sometimes ventured on a more difficult feat than
+stealing in the outer world: he had stolen in the Jago. Sam Cash, for
+instance, had lost a bloater.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky never ate at Weech's now. Rarely, indeed, would he take payment in
+kind, unless it were for something of smaller value than the average of
+his poor pilferings; and then he carried the food home. But cheaper
+things could be bought elsewhere, so that more usually he insisted on
+money payments: to the grief of Mr Weech, who set forth the odiousness
+of ingratitude at length; though his homilies had no sort of effect on
+Dicky's morals.</p>
+
+<p>Father Sturt saw that Hannah Perrott gained no ground in her struggle,
+and urged her to apply for outdoor parish relief, promising to second
+her request with the guardians. But with an odd throwback to the
+respectability of her boiler-making ancestry, she disliked the notion of
+help from the parish, and preferred to remain as she was; for there at
+least her ingrained inertness seemed to side with some phantom of
+self-respect. To her present position she had subsided by almost
+imperceptible degrees, and she was scarce conscious of a change. But to
+parish relief there was a distinct and palpable step: a step that, on
+the whole, it seemed easier not to take. But it was with eagerness that
+she took a Maternity Society's letter, wherewith the vicar had provided
+himself on her behalf. For her time was drawing near.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXVIII" id="XXVIII"></a>XXVIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Josh Perrott well understood the advantage of good prison-behaviour, and
+after six months in his Chelmsford cell he had earned the right to a
+visit from friends. But none came. He had scarcely expected that anybody
+would, and asked for the order merely on the general principle that a
+man should take all he can get, useful or not. For there would have been
+a five shilling fare to pay for each visitor from London, and Hannah
+Perrott could as easily have paid five pounds. And indeed she had other
+things to think of.</p>
+
+<p>Kiddo Cook had been less observed of late in the Jago. In simple fact he
+was at work. He found that a steady week of porterage at Spitalfields
+Market would bring him sixteen shillings and perhaps a little more; and
+he had taken Father Sturt's encouragement to try another week, and a
+week after that. Father Sturt too, had cunningly stimulated Kiddo's
+ambitions: till he cherished aspirations to a fruit and vegetable stall,
+with a proper tarpaulin cover for bad weather; though he cherished them
+in secret, confident that they were of his own independent conception.
+Perhaps the Perrotts saw as much of Kiddo as did anybody at this time.
+For Kiddo, seeing how it went with them (though indeed it went as badly
+with others too) built up laboriously a solemn and most circumstantial
+Lie. There was a friend of his, a perfect gentleman, who used a
+beer-shop by Spitalfields Market, and who had just started an extensive
+and complicated business in the general provision line. He sold all
+sorts of fruit and vegetables fresh, and all sorts of meat, carrots,
+cabbages, saveloys, fried fish and pease-pudding cooked. His motto
+was:&mdash;'Everything <i>of</i> the best.' But he had the misfortune to be quite
+unable himself to judge whether his goods were really of the best or
+not, in consequence of an injury to his palate, arising from a blow on
+the mouth with a quart pot, inflicted in the heat of discussion by a
+wealthy acquaintance. So that he, being a perfect gentleman, had
+requested Kiddo Cook, out of the friendship he bore him, to drop in
+occasionally and test his samples. 'Take a good big whack, you know,'
+said he, 'and get the advice of a friend or two, if <i>you</i> ain't sure.'
+So Kiddo would take frequent and handsome whacks accordingly, to the
+perfect gentleman's delight; and, not quite knowing what to do with all
+the whacks, or being desirous of an independent opinion on them (there
+was some confusion between these two motives) he would bring Mrs Perrott
+samples, from time to time, and hope it wouldn't inconvenience her. It
+never did.</p>
+
+<p>It was late in the dusk of a rainy day that Kiddo Cook stumped into Old
+Jago Street with an apple in his pocket for Em. It was not much, but
+money was a little short, and at any rate the child would be pleased. As
+he climbed the stairs he grew conscious of sounds of anguish, muffled by
+the Perrotts' door. There might have been sobs, and there seemed to be
+groans; certainly little Em was crying, though but faintly, and
+something&mdash;perhaps boot-heels&mdash;scraped on the boards. Kiddo hesitated a
+little, and then knocked softly. The knock was unnoticed, so in the end
+he pushed the door open.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>The day had been a bad one with the Perrotts. Dicky had gone out early,
+and had not returned. His mother had tramped unfed to the sackmakers,
+but there was no work to be got. She tried the rush bag people, with a
+like result. Nor was any matchbox material being given out. An
+unregarded turnip had rolled from a shop into the gutter, and she had
+seized it stealthily. It was not in nature to take it home whole, and
+once a corner was cleared, she dragged herself Jago-ward, gnawing the
+root furtively as she went. And so she joined Em at home late in the
+afternoon.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Kiddo pushed the door open and went in. At his second step he stood
+staring, and his chin dropped. 'Good Gawd!' said Kiddo Cook.</p>
+
+<p>He cleared the stairs in three jumps. He stood but an instant on the
+flags before the house, with a quick glance each way, and then dashed
+off through the mud.</p>
+
+<p>Pigeony Poll was erratic in residence, but just now she had a room by
+the roof of a house in Jago Row, and up the stairs of this house Kiddo
+ran, calling her by name.</p>
+
+<p>'Go over to Perrotts', quick!' he shouted from the landing below as Poll
+appeared at her door. 'Run, for Gawd's sake, or the woman'll croak! I'm
+auf to Father's.' And he rushed away to the vicar's lodgings.</p>
+
+<p>Father Sturt emerged at a run, and made for a surgeon's in Shoreditch
+High Street. And when the surgeon reached Hannah Perrott he found her
+stretched on her ragged bed, tended, with anxious clumsiness, by Pigeony
+Poll; while little Em, tearful and abashed, sat in a corner and nibbled
+a bit of turnip.</p>
+
+<p>Hannah Perrott had anticipated the operation of the Maternity Society
+letter, and another child of the Jago had come unconsenting into its
+black inheritance.</p>
+
+<p>Father Sturt met the surgeon as he came away in the later evening, and
+asked if all were well. The surgeon shrugged his shoulders. 'People
+would call it so,' he said. 'The boy's alive, and so is the mother. But
+you and I may say the truth. You know the Jago far better than I. Is
+there a child in all this place that wouldn't be better dead&mdash;still
+better unborn? But does a day pass without bringing you just such a
+parishioner? Here lies the Jago, a nest of rats, breeding, breeding, as
+only rats can; and we say it is well. On high moral grounds we uphold
+the right of rats to multiply their thousands. Sometimes we catch a rat.
+And we keep it a little while, nourish it carefully, and put it back
+into the nest to propagate its kind.'</p>
+
+<p>Father Sturt walked a little way in silence. Then he said:&mdash;'You are
+right, of course. But who'll listen, if you shout it from the housetops?
+I might try to proclaim it myself, if I had time and energy to waste.
+But I have none&mdash;I must work, and so must you. The burden grows day by
+day, as you say. The thing's hopeless, perhaps, but that is not for me
+to discuss. I have my duty.'</p>
+
+<p>The surgeon was a young man, but Shoreditch had helped him over most of
+his enthusiasms. 'That's right,' he said, 'quite right. People are so
+very genteel, aren't they?' He laughed, as at a droll remembrance. 'But,
+hang it all, men like ourselves needn't talk as though the world was
+built of hardbake. It's a mighty relief to speak truth with a man who
+knows&mdash;a man not rotted through with sentiment. Think how few men we
+trust with the power to give a fellow creature a year in gaol, and how
+carefully we pick them! Even damnation is out of fashion, I believe,
+among theologians. But any noxious wretch may damn human souls to the
+Jago, one after another, year in year out, and we respect his right: his
+sacred right.'</p>
+
+<p>At the 'Posties' the two men separated. The rain, which had abated for a
+space, came up on a driving wind, and whipped Dicky Perrott home to meet
+his new brother.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXIX" id="XXIX"></a>XXIX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Things grew a little easier with the Perrotts. Father Sturt saw that
+there was food while the mother was renewing her strength, and he had a
+bag of linen sent. More, he carried his point as to parish relief by
+main force. It was two shillings and three quartern loaves a week.
+Unfortunately the loaves were imprinted with the parish mark, or they
+might have been sold at the chandler's, in order that the whole measure
+of relief might be passed on to the landlord (a very respectable man,
+with a chandler's shop of his own) for rent. As it was, the bread
+perforce was eaten, and the landlord had the two shillings, as well as
+eighteenpence which had to be got in some other way. Of course, Hannah
+Perrott might have 'taken in lodgers' in the room, as others did, but
+she doubted her ability to bully the rent out of them, or to turn them
+out if they did not pay. Whatever was pawnable had gone already, of
+course, except the little nickel-plated clock. That might have produced
+as much as sixpence, but she had a whim to keep it. She regarded it as a
+memorial of Josh, for it was his sole contribution to the family
+appointments.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky, with a cast-off jacket from the vicar's store, took to hanging
+about Liverpool Street Station in quest of bags to carry. Sometimes he
+got bags, and coppers for carrying them: sometimes he got kicks from
+porters. An hour or two of disappointment in this pursuit would send him
+off on the prowl to 'find' new stock for Mr Weech. He went farther
+afield now: to the market-places in Mile End and Stepney, and to the
+riverside, where there were many chances&mdash;guarded jealously, however, by
+the pirate boys of the neighbourhood, who would tolerate no interlopers
+at the wharves. In the very early morning, too, he practised the
+sand-bag fake, in the Jago. For there were those among the Jagos who
+kept (two even bred) linnets and such birds, and prepared them for
+julking, or singing matches at the Bag of Nails. It was the habit of the
+bird-fanciers to hang their little wooden cages on nails out of window,
+and there they hung through the night: for it had been noted, as a
+surprising peculiarity in linnets, that a bird would droop and go off
+song after a dozen or so of nights in a Jago room, in company with
+eight, ten or a dozen human sleepers, notwithstanding the thoughtful
+shutting of windows. So that any early riser provided with a little bag
+packed with a handful or so of sand, could become an opulent bird-owner
+in half-an-hour. Let but the sand-bag be pitched with proper skill at
+the bottom of a cage, and that cage would leave the nail, and come
+tumbling and fluttering down into the ready hands of the early riser.
+The sand-bag brought down the cage and fell quietly on the flags, which
+was why it was preferred before a stone. The sand-bag faker was moved by
+no particular love of linnets. His spoil was got rid of as soon as the
+bird-shops opened in Club Row. And his craft was one of danger.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the months went with Dicky, and the years. There were changes in
+the Jago. The baby was but three months old when Father Sturt's new
+church was opened, and the club set going in new buildings; and it was
+at that time that Josh Perrott was removed to Portland. Even the gradual
+removal of the Old Jago itself was begun. For the County Council bought
+a row of houses at the end of Jago Row, by Honey Lane, with a design to
+build big barrack dwellings on the site. The scenes of the Jago Court
+eviction were repeated, with less governed antics. For the County
+Council knew not Jago ways; and when deputations came forth weeping,
+protesting the impossibility of finding new lodgings, and beseeching a
+respite, they were given six weeks more, and went back delighted into
+free quarters. At the end of the six weeks a larger deputation protested
+a little louder, wept a great deal more, and poached another month; for
+it would seem an unpopular thing to turn the people into the street.
+Thus in the end, when the unpopular thing had to be done, it was with
+sevenfold trouble, loud cursing of the County Council in the public
+street, and many fights. But this one spot of the Jago cleared, the
+County Council began to creep along Jago Row and into Half Jago Street;
+and after long delay the crude yellow brick of the barrack dwellings
+rose above the oft-stolen hoardings, and grew, storey by storey. Dicky
+was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. If Josh Perrott had only earned his
+marks, he would soon be out now.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXX" id="XXX"></a>XXX</h2>
+
+
+<p>Josh Perrott earned his marks, and in less than four years from his
+conviction he came away from Portland. It was a mere matter of hours ere
+his arrival in London, when Dicky, hands in pockets, strolled along Old
+Jago Street, and by the 'Posties' to High Street.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky was almost at his seventeenth birthday. He had grown his utmost,
+and stood five feet two. He wore a cap with a cloth peak and ear-laps
+tied at the top with strings, slap-up kicksies, cut saucy, and a
+bob-tail coat of the out-and-out description: though all these glories
+were torn and shabby, and had been bought second-hand. He was safe from
+any risk of the reformatory now, being well over the age; and he had had
+the luck never to have been taken by the police since his father's
+lagging&mdash;though there were escapes too narrow to be thought about with
+comfort. It was a matter for wonderment, and he spoke of it with pride.
+Here he was, a man of long experience, and near seventeen years old, yet
+he had never been in prison. Few, very few of such an age could say
+that.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes he saw his old enemy, the hunchback, who worked at a
+shoemaker's, but he saw him with unconcern. He cared nothing for
+tale-bearing now. The memory of old injuries had dulled, and, after all,
+this was a merely inconsiderable hunchback, whom it were beneath his
+dignity to regard with anything but tolerant indifference. Bob Roper
+steered clear at such encounters, and showed his teeth like a cat, and
+looked back malevolently. It didn't matter.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky was not married, either in the simple Jago fashion or in church.
+There was little difference, as a matter of fact, so far as facility
+went. There was a church in Bethnal Green where you might be married for
+sevenpence if you were fourteen years old, and no questions asked&mdash;or
+at any rate they were questions answers whereunto were easy to invent.
+You just came in, drunk if possible, with a batch of some scores, and
+rowdied about the church with your hat on, and the curate worked off the
+crowd at one go, calling the names one after another. You sang, or you
+shouted, or you drank out of a bottle, or you flung a prayer-book at a
+friend, as the fancy took you; and the whole thing was not a bad joke
+for the money, though after all sevenpence is half-a-gallon, and not to
+be wasted. But Dicky had had enough to do to look after his mother and
+Em and little Josh&mdash;as Hannah Perrott had called the baby. Dicky,
+indeed, had a family already. More: the Jago girls affected him with an
+odd feeling of repulsion. Not of themselves, perhaps, though they were
+squalid drabs long ere they were ripe for the sevenpenny church: but by
+comparison with the clean, remote shop-girls who were visible through
+the broad windows in the outer streets.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky intended the day to be a holiday. He was not going 'out,' as the
+word went, for ill-luck had a way of coming on notable days like this,
+and he might easily chance to 'fall' before his father got home. He was
+almost too big now for carrying bags at Liverpool Street, because small
+boys looked cheaper than large ones&mdash;not that there was anything
+especially large about Dicky, beyond his height of five feet two; and at
+the moment he could think of nothing else that might turn a copper. He
+stood irresolute on the High Street footway, and as he stood, Kiddo Cook
+hove in sight, dragging a barrow-load of carrots and cabbages. Kiddo had
+not yet compassed the stall with the rain-proof awning. But it was
+almost in sight, for the barrow could scarce hold all that he could
+sell; and there was a joke abroad that he was to be married in Father
+Sturt's church: some facetiously suggesting that Mother Gapp would prove
+a good investment commercially, while others maintained the greater
+eligibility of old Poll Rann.</p>
+
+<p>''Tcheer, Dicky!' said Kiddo, pulling up and wiping his cap-lining with
+a red cotton handkerchief. 'Ol' man out to-day, ain't 'e?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yus,' Dicky answered. ''Spect 'im up to-night.'</p>
+
+<p>Kiddo nodded, and wiped his face. ''Spose the mob'll git up a break for
+'im,' he said; 'but 'e'll 'ave a bit o' gilt from stir as well, won't
+'e? So 'e'll be awright.' And Kiddo stuffed his handkerchief into his
+trousers pocket, pulled his cap tight, and bent to his barrow-handles.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky turned idly to the left, and slouched to the corner of Meakin
+Street. There he loafed for a little while, and then went as aimlessly
+up the turning. Meakin Street was much as ever. There were still the
+chandlers' shops, where tea and sugar were sold by the farthingsworth,
+and the barber's where hair was fashionably cut for three half-pence:
+though Jago hair was commonly cut in another place and received little
+more attention. There was still Walker's cook-shop, foggy with steam,
+its windows all a-trickle, and there was the Original Slap-up Tog
+Emporium, with its kicksies and its benjamins cut saucy as ever, and its
+double fakements still artful. At the 'dispensary' there was another
+young student, but his advice and medicine were sixpence, just as his
+remote predecessor's had been for little Looey, long forgotten. And
+farther down on the opposite side, Mr Aaron Weech's coffee-shop, with
+its Sunday-school festival bills, maintained its general Band-of-Hope
+air, and displayed its shrivelled bloaters, its doubtful cake, and its
+pallid scones in an odour of respectability and stale pickles. Dicky
+glanced in as he came by the door, and met the anxious eye of Mr Weech,
+whom he had not seen for a fortnight. For Dicky was no boy now, but knew
+enough to sell at Cohen's or elsewhere whenever possible, and to care
+not a rap for Mr Weech.</p>
+
+<p>As that tradesman saw Dicky, he burst into an eager smile, and came
+forward. 'Good mornin',&mdash;er&mdash;' with a quick glance&mdash;'Mr Perrott! Good
+mornin'! You're quite a stranger, reely!'</p>
+
+<p><i>Mister</i> Perrott! Mr Weech was very polite. Dicky stopped, and grunted a
+cautious salutation.</p>
+
+<p>'Do come in, Mr Perrott. Wy, is the good noos right wot I 'ear, about
+yer father a-comin' 'ome from&mdash;from the country?'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky confirmed the news.</p>
+
+<p>'Well I <i>am</i> glad t' 'ear that now.' Mr Weech grinned exceedingly,
+though there was something lacking in his delight. 'But there, wot'll
+you 'ave, Mr Perrott? Say anythink in the 'ole shop and welcome! It's
+sich an 'appy occasion, Mr Perrott, I couldn't think o' chargin' you a
+'apeny. 'Ave a rasher, now, do. There's one on at this very moment.
+Sairer! ain't that rasher done yut?'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky did not understand this liberality, but he had long since adopted
+the policy of taking all he could get. So he sat at a table, and Mr
+Weech sat opposite.</p>
+
+<p>'Jist like ole times, ain't it?' said Mr Weech. 'An' that reminds me I
+owe you a shillin'. It's that pair o' noo boots you chucked over the
+back fence a fortnight ago. W'en I come to look at 'em, they was
+better'n wot I thought, an' so I says to meself, "This won't do," says
+I. "On'y ninepence for a pair o' boots like them ain't fair," I says,
+"an' I'd rayther be at a lawss on 'em than not be fair. Fair's fair, as
+the apostle David says in the Proverbs, an' them boots is worth very
+near <i>one</i>-an'-nine. So I'll give Mr Perrott another shillin'," I says,
+"the very next time I see 'im." An' there it is.'</p>
+
+<p>He put the shilling on the table, and Dicky pocketed it, nothing loth.
+The thing might be hard to understand, but that concerned him not.
+There was the shilling. Likewise, there was the bacon, and the coffee
+that went with it, and Dicky went at them with a will, recking nothing
+of why they were there, and nothing of any matter which might make the
+giver anxious in the prospect of an early meeting with Josh.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah,' Mr Weech went on, 'it'll be quite a pleasure to see yer father
+agin, that it will. Wot a blessed release! "Free from the lor O 'appy
+condition," as the 'ymn says. I 'ope 'e'll be well an' 'arty. An'
+if&mdash;<i>if</i> there should be anythink in the way of a friendly lead or a
+subscription or wot not, I 'ope&mdash;remember this, Mr Perrott,
+won'tcher?&mdash;I 'ope you'll let me 'ave a chance to put down somethink
+good. Not as I can reely afford it, ye know, Mr Perrott&mdash;trade's very
+pore, an' it's sich a neighb'r'ood!&mdash;but I'll do it for yer father&mdash;yus,
+if it's me last copper. Ye won't forgit that, will ye? An' if 'e'd like
+any little relish w'en 'e comes 'ome&mdash;sich as a 'addick or a bit o'
+'am&mdash;wy, I'll wrop it up an' send it.'</p>
+
+<p>This was all very handsome, and Dicky wished some notion of the sort had
+occurred to Mr Weech on a few of the dinnerless days of the past four
+years. But he went away wondering if it might not be well to regard Mr
+Weech with caution for a while. For there must be a reason for all this
+generosity.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXI" id="XXXI"></a>XXXI</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was in Mother Gapp's that Josh Perrott and his family met. Hannah had
+started out with an idea of meeting him at Waterloo Station; but,
+finding herself an object of distinction and congratulation among the
+women she met, she had lingered by the way, accepting many little drops,
+to prove herself not unduly proud, and so had failed of her intent.
+Josh, on his part, had not been abstinent. He had successfully run the
+gauntlet of Prisoners' Aid Societies and the like, professing to have 'a
+job waiting for him' in Shoreditch, and his way across London had been
+freely punctuated at public-houses; for his prison gratuity was a very
+pleasant and useful little sum. And now, when at last they met, he was
+not especially gracious. He wanted to know, not only why he had found
+nobody at home, but also why Hannah had never been to see him at
+Portland. As to the second question, the obvious and sufficient answer
+was that the return fare to Portland would have been some twenty-five
+shillings: a sum that Hannah had never seen together since Josh left
+her. As to the first, she protested, with muddled vehemence, that she
+had gone to meet him, and had missed him by some mistake as to arrival
+platforms. So that at length, urged thereto by the rest of the hour's
+customers at the Feathers, Josh kissed her sulkily and ordered her a
+drink. Em was distrustful at first, but drank her allowance of gin with
+much relish, tipping the glass again and again to catch the last drop;
+and little Josh, now for the first time introduced to Josh the elder,
+took a dislike to his father's not particularly sober glare and grin,
+and roared aloud upon his knee, assailing him, between the roars, with
+every curse familiar in the Jago, amid the genial merriment of the
+company. Dicky came in quietly, and stood at his father's elbow with
+the pride natural to a dutiful son on such an occasion. And at
+closing-time they all helped each other home.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning Josh rose late. He looked all the better for his lagging,
+browner than ever in the face, smarter and stouter. In a corner he
+perceived a little heap of made match-boxes, and, hard by, the material
+for more. It was Em's work of yesterday morning. 'Support 'ome
+ind<i>us</i>tries,' said Josh, musingly. 'Yus. Twopence-farden a gross.' And
+he kicked the heap to splinters.</p>
+
+<p>He strolled out into the street, to survey the Jago. In the bulk it was
+little changed, though the County Council had made a difference in the
+north-east corner, and was creeping farther and farther still. The
+dispossessed Jagos had gone to infect the neighbourhoods across the
+border, and to crowd the people a little closer. They did not return to
+live in the new barrack-buildings; which was a strange thing, for the
+County Council was charging very little more than double the rents which
+the landlords of the Old Jago had charged. And so another Jago, teeming
+and villainous as the one displaced, was slowly growing, in the form of
+a ring, round about the great yellow houses. But the new church and its
+attendant buildings most took Josh's notice. They were little more than
+begun when last he walked Old Jago Street in daylight, and now they
+stood, large and healthy amid the dens about them, a wonder and a pride.
+As he looked, Jerry Gullen and Bill Rann passed.</p>
+
+<p>'Wayo, brother-in-law!' sang out Bill Rann, who remembered the Old
+Bailey fiction of four years back, and thought it a capital joke.</p>
+
+<p>'Nice sort o' thing, ain't it?' said Jerry Gullen with indignant
+sarcasm, jerking his thumb toward the new church. 'The street's clean
+ruined. Wot's the good o' livin' 'ere now? Wy, a man mustn't even do a
+click, blimy!'</p>
+
+<p>'An' doncher?' asked Josh with a grin. Hereat another grin broke wide on
+Jerry Gullen's face, and he went his way with a wink and a whistle.</p>
+
+<p>'And so you're back again, Josh Perrott!' said old Beveridge, seedier
+than ever, with the 'Hard Up' fresh chalked on the changeless hat. 'Back
+again! Pity you couldn't stay there, isn't it? Pity we can't all stay
+there.'</p>
+
+<p>Josh looked after the gaunt old figure with much doubt and a vague
+indignation: for such a view was foreign to his understanding. And as he
+looked Father Sturt came out of the church, and laid his hand on Josh's
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>'What!' exclaimed the vicar, 'home again without coming to see me! But
+there, you must have been coming. I hope you haven't been knocking long?
+Come in now, at any rate. You're looking wonderfully well. What a
+capital thing a holiday is, isn't it&mdash;a good long one?' Taking Josh by
+the arm he hauled him, grinning, sheepish and almost blushing, toward
+the club door. And at that moment Sam Cash came hurrying round Luck Row
+corner, with his finger through a string, and on that string a bunch of
+grouse.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear me,' said Father Sturt, turning back, but without releasing Josh's
+arm. 'Here's our dear friend, Sam Cash, taking home something for his
+lunch. Come, Sam, with such a fine lot of birds as that, I'm sure you'll
+be proud to tell us where they came from. Eh?'</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Sam Cash was a trifle puzzled, even offended. Then there
+fell over his face the mask of utter inexpression which the vicar had
+learned to know. Said Sam Cash, stolidly: 'I bin 'avin' a little
+shootin' with a friend.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear, dear, what a charming friend! And where are his moors? Nowhere
+about the Bethnal Green Road, I suppose, by the goods depot? Come now,
+I'm sure Josh Perrott would like to know. You didn't get any shooting in
+your little holiday, did you, Josh?' Josh grinned, delighted, but Sam
+shuffled uneasily, with a hopeless sidelong glance as in search of a
+hole wherein to hide. 'Ah, you see,' Father Sturt said, 'he doesn't want
+his friend's hospitality to be abused. Let me see&mdash;two, four, six&mdash;why
+there must be nine or ten brace, and all at one shot, too! Sam always
+makes his bag at one shot, you know, Josh, whatever the game is. Yes,
+wonderful shooting. And did you shoot the label at the same time, Sam?
+Come, I <i>should</i> like to look at that label!'</p>
+
+<p>But the wretched Sam was off at a bolt, faster than a police pursuit
+would have sent him, while Josh guffawed joyously. To be 'rotted' by
+Father Sturt was the true Jago terror, but to the Jagos looking on it
+was pure delight. Theft was a piece of the Jago nature; but at least
+Father Sturt could wither the pride of it by such ridicule as the Jago
+could understand.</p>
+
+<p>'There&mdash;he's very bashful for a sportsman, isn't he, Josh?' the vicar
+proceeded. 'But you must come and see the club at once. You shall be a
+member.'</p>
+
+<p>Josh spent near an hour in the new buildings. Father Sturt showed him
+the club, the night shelter, the church, and his own little rooms. He
+asked, too, much about Josh's intentions for the future. Of course, Josh
+was 'going to look for a job.' Father Sturt knew he would say that.
+Every Jago had been going to look for a job ever since the vicar first
+came to the place. But he professed to take Josh's word seriously, and
+offered to try to get him taken on as a plasterer at some of the new
+County Council buildings. He flattered Josh by reminding him of his
+command of a regular trade. Josh was a man with opportunities, and he
+should be above the pitiable expedients of the poor untradesmanlike
+about him. Indeed, he should leave the Jago altogether, with his family,
+and start afresh in a new place, a reputable mechanic.</p>
+
+<p>To these things Josh Perrott listened with fidgety deference, answering
+only 'Yus, Father,' when it seemed to be necessary. In the end he
+promised to 'think it over,' which meant nothing, as the parson well
+knew. And in the mood in which Josh came away he would gladly have
+risked another lagging to serve Father Sturt's convenience; but he would
+rather have suffered one than take Father Sturt's advice.</p>
+
+<p>He made the day a holiday. He had been told that he was in for a little
+excitement, for it was held that fitting time had arrived for another
+scrap with Dove Lane; but the affair was not yet moving. Snob Spicer had
+broken a window with a Dove-Laner's head, it was true, but nothing had
+come of it, and etiquette demanded that the next card should be played
+by Dove Lane. For the present, the Jago was content to take thought for
+Josh's 'friendly lead.' Such a thing was everybody's right on return
+from a lagging, and this one was fixed for a night next week.</p>
+
+<p>All that day Mr Weech looked out anxiously, but Josh Perrott never
+passed his way.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXII" id="XXXII"></a>XXXII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Bill Rann called for Josh early the next morning, and they strolled down
+Old Jago Street in close communion.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you on for a job?' asked Bill. ''Cos I got one cut an' dried&mdash;a
+topper, an' safe as 'ouses.'</p>
+
+<p>'Wot sort o' job's this?'</p>
+
+<p>'Wy a bust&mdash;unless we can screw it.'</p>
+
+<p>This meant a breaking-in, with a possibility of a quieter entrance by
+means of keys. It was unpleasantly suggestive of Josh's last exploit,
+but he answered: 'Awright. Depends, o' course.'</p>
+
+<p>'O, it's a good un.' Bill Rann grinned for no obvious reason, and
+slapped his leg to express rapturous amusement. 'It's a good un&mdash;you can
+take yer davy o' that. I bin a thinkin' about it for a fortnight, but
+it wants two. Damme, it's nobby!' And Bill Rann grinned again, and made
+two taps of a step-dance. 'Wotjer think,' he pursued, suddenly serious,
+'wotjer think o' screwin' a fence?'</p>
+
+<p>It was a novel notion, but in Josh's mind, at first flush, it seemed
+unsportmanlike. 'Wot fence?' asked Josh.</p>
+
+<p>Bill Rann's grin burst wide again. He bent low, with outstretched chin,
+and stuck his elbows out as he answered: 'Wy, ole Weech!'</p>
+
+<p>Josh bared his teeth&mdash;but with no smile&mdash;looking sharply in the other's
+upturned face. Bill Rann, bent nearly double, and with hands in pockets,
+flapped his arms in the manner of wings, chuckled aloud, and, jerking
+his feet back and forth, went elaborately through the first movement of
+the gallows-flap. 'Eh? eh?' said he. ''Ow's that strike ye, ole cock?'</p>
+
+<p>Josh answered not, but his parted lips stretched wide, and his
+tongue-tip passed quickly over them while he thought.</p>
+
+<p>'It'll be a fair cop for 'im,' Bill pursued, eagerly. ''E's treated us
+all pretty mean, one time or other. Wy, I bet 'e <i>owes</i> us fifty quid
+atween us, wot with all the times 'e's squeeged us for a bit. It'll on'y
+be goin' to bring away our own stuff!'</p>
+
+<p>'G-r-r-r!' Josh growled, glaring fiercely; 'it was 'im as put me away
+for my laggin'! Bleed'n' swine!'</p>
+
+<p>Bill Rann stopped, surprised. 'Wot&mdash;'im?' he exclaimed. 'Ole Weech
+narked ye? 'Owjer know that?'</p>
+
+<p>Josh told the tale of his negotiations in the matter of the Mogul's
+watch, and described Weech's terror at sight of his dash at the
+shop-door. 'I'm on,' said Josh in conclusion. 'It's one way o' payin'
+'im, an' it'll bring a bit in. On'y <i>'e</i> better not show 'isself w'ile
+I'm abaat! <i>'E</i> wouldn't git auf with a punch on the chin, like the
+bloke at 'Ighbury!' Josh Perrott ended with a tigerish snarl and a white
+spot at the curl of each of his nostrils.</p>
+
+<p>'Blimy!' said Bill Rann; 'an' so it was 'im, was it? I often wondered
+'oo you meant. Well, flimpin' 'im's the best way. Won't 'e sing a
+bleed'n' 'ymn w'en 'e finds 'is stuff weeded!' Bill flung back his
+head, and laughed again. 'But there,&mdash;let's lay it out.' And the two men
+fell to the discussion of methods.</p>
+
+<p>Weech's back-fence was to be his undoing. It was the obvious plan. The
+front shutters were impracticable in such a place as Meakin Street; but
+the alleys in the rear were a perfect approach. Bill Rann had surveyed
+the spot attentively, and, after expert consideration, he had selected
+the wash-house window as the point of entrance. Old boxes and
+packing-wood littered the yard, and it would be easy to mount a selected
+box, shift the catch of the little window, and wriggle in, feet first,
+without noise. True, the door between the wash-house and the other rooms
+might be fastened, but it could be worked at under cover; and Bill Rann
+had a belief that there must be a good deal of 'stuff' in the wash-house
+itself. There would be nobody in the house but Weech, because the
+wretched old woman, who swept the floors and cooked bloaters, was sent
+away at night; so that every room must be unoccupied but one.</p>
+
+<p>As for tools, Josh had none, but Bill Rann undertook to provide them;
+and in the matter of time it was considered that that same night would
+be as good as any. It would be better than most, in fact, for it was
+Wednesday, and Bill Rann had observed that Mr Weech went to the bank in
+High Street, Shoreditch, pretty regularly on Thursday mornings.</p>
+
+<p>This day also Mr Weech kept a careful watch for Josh Perrott, but saw
+him not.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIII" id="XXXIII"></a>XXXIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Hannah Perrott did her best to keep Josh from going out that night. She
+did not explain her objections, because she did not know precisely what
+they were, though they were in some sort prompted by his manner; and it
+was solely because of her constitutional inability to urge them with any
+persistence that she escaped forcible retort. For Josh was in a savage
+and self-centred mood.</p>
+
+<p>'Wy, wot's up?' asked Bill Rann, when they met, looking doubtfully in
+his pal's face. 'You ain't bin boozin', 'ave ye?'</p>
+
+<p>Josh repelled the question with a snarl. 'No I ain't,' he said. 'Got the
+tools?' There was a thickness in his voice, with a wildness in his eye,
+that might well explain his partner's doubt.</p>
+
+<p>'Yus. Come under the light. I couldn't git no twirls, an' we sha'n't
+want 'em. 'Ere's a screwdriver, an' two gimlets, an' a knife for the
+winderketch, an' a little james, an' a neddy&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'A neddy!' Josh cut in, scornfully pointing his thumb at the instrument,
+which some call life-preserver. 'A neddy for Weech! G-r-r-r! I might
+take a neddy to a <i>man</i>!'</p>
+
+<p>'That's awright,' Bill replied. 'But it 'ud frighten 'im pretty well,
+wouldn't it? Look 'ere. S'pose we can't find the oof. W'y shouldn't we
+wake up Mr Weech very quiet an' respeckful, an' ask 'im t' 'elp us? 'E's
+all alone, an' I'm sure 'e'll be glad to 'blige, w'en 'e sees this 'ere
+neddy, without waitin' for a tap. W'y, blimy, I b'lieve 'e'd be afraid
+to sing out any'ow, for fear o' bringin' in the coppers to find all the
+stuff 'e's bought on the crook! It's all done, once we're inside!'</p>
+
+<p>It was near midnight, and Bill Rann had observed Weech putting up his
+shutters at eleven. So the two Jagos walked slowly along Meakin Street,
+on the side opposite Weech's, with sharp eyes for the windows.</p>
+
+<p>All was quiet; there was no visible light&mdash;none from the skylight over
+the shop door, none from the window above, none from the garret window
+above that. They passed on, crossed the road, strolled back, and
+listened at the door; there was no sound from within. The clock in a
+distant steeple struck twelve, and was joined at the fourth stroke by
+the loud bell of St Leonards, hard by; and ere the last mild note had
+sounded from the farthest clock in the awakened chorus, Josh Perrott and
+Bill Rann had taken the next turning, and were pushing their way to the
+alleys behind Weech's.</p>
+
+<p>Foul rat-runs, these alleys, not to be traversed by a stranger. Josh and
+Bill plunged into one narrow archway after another, each of which might
+have been the private passage of a house, and came at last, stealthy and
+unseen, into the muddy yard.</p>
+
+<p>Weech's back-fence was before them, and black house-backs crowded them
+round. There were but one or two lights in the windows, and those
+windows were shut and curtained. The rear of Weech's house was black and
+silent as the front. They peered over the fence. The yard was
+pitch-dark, but faint angular tokens here and there told of heaped boxes
+and lumber. 'We won't tip 'im the whistle this time,' whispered Bill
+Rann, with a smothered chuckle. 'Over!'</p>
+
+<p>He bent his knee, and Josh straddled from it over the rickety fence with
+quiet care, and lowered himself gingerly on the other side. 'Clear
+'ere,' he whispered. 'Come on.' Since Bill's display of the tools Josh
+had scarce spoken a word. Bill wondered at his taciturnity, but
+respected it as a business-like quality in the circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>It was but a matter of four or five yards to the wash-house window, but
+they bent and felt their way. Josh took up an old lemonade-case as he
+went, and planted it on the ground below the window, stretching his hand
+for the knife as he did so. And now he took command and foremost place.</p>
+
+<p>It was an old shoemaker's knife, with too long a handle; for there was a
+skew-joint in the sash, and the knife would not bend. Presently Bill
+Rann, below, could see that Josh was cutting away the putty from the
+pane, and in five minutes the pane itself was put into his hand. He
+stooped, and laid it noiselessly on the soft ground.</p>
+
+<p>Josh turned the catch and lifted the sash. There was some noise, but not
+much, as he pushed the frame up evenly, with a thumb at each side. They
+waited; but it was quite still, and Josh, sitting on the sill,
+man&oelig;uvred his legs, one at a time, through the narrow opening. Then,
+turning over, he let himself down, and beckoned Bill Rann to follow.</p>
+
+<p>Bill Rann had a small tin box, with an inch of candle on the inside of
+one end, so that when the wick was lit the contrivance made a simple but
+an effective lantern, the light whereof shone in front alone, and could
+be extinguished at a puff. Now a match was struck, and a quick view
+taken of the wash-house.</p>
+
+<p>There was not much about; only cracked and greasy plates, jars, tins,
+pots and pans, and in a corner a miscellaneous heap, plainly cheap
+pilferings, covered with a bit of old carpet. The air was offensive with
+the characteristic smell of Weech's&mdash;the smell of stale pickles.</p>
+
+<p>'There ain't nothin' to waste time over 'ere,' said Josh, aloud. 'Come
+on!'</p>
+
+<p>'Shut up, you damn fool!' exclaimed Bill Rann, in a whisper. 'D'jer want
+to wake 'im?'</p>
+
+<p>'Umph! Why not?' was the reply, still aloud. Bill began to feel that his
+pal was really drunk. But, silent once more, Josh applied himself to the
+door of the inner room. It was crank and old, worn and battered at the
+edges. Josh forced the wedge end of the jemmy through the jamb,
+splintering the perished wood of the frame, and, with a push, forced the
+striking-box of the lock off its screws. There was still a bolt at the
+top; that at the bottom had lost its catch&mdash;but this gave as little
+trouble as the lock. Bill Rann strained the door open from below, the
+jemmy entered readily, and in a few seconds the top bolt was in like
+case with the bottom.</p>
+
+<p>They entered the room behind the shop, and it was innocent and
+disappointing. A loo table, four horse-hair-covered chairs, a mirror,
+three coloured wall-texts, two china figures and a cheap walnut
+sideboard&mdash;that was all. The slow step of a policeman without stopped,
+with a push at the shop-door, to test its fastenings, and then went on;
+and stronger than ever was the smell of stale pickles.</p>
+
+<p>To try the shop would be mere waste of time. Weech's pocket was the
+till, and there could be no other prize. A door at the side of the room,
+latched simply, gave on the stairs. 'Take auf yer boots,' Bill
+whispered, unlacing his own, and slinging them across his shoulder by
+the tied laces.</p>
+
+<p>But Josh would not, and he said so, with an oath. Bill could not
+understand him. <i>Could</i> it be drink? Bill wished him a mile away.
+'Awright,' he whispered, 'you set down 'ere w'ile I slip upstairs an'
+take a peep. I bet the stuffs in the garret. Best on'y one goes, quiet.'</p>
+
+<p>Josh sat, and Bill, taking his lantern, crept up the stairs noiselessly,
+save for one creak. He gained the stair-head, listened a moment,
+tip-toed along the small landing, and was half-way up the steep and
+narrow garret-stairs, when he heard a sound, and stopped. Somebody was
+on the lower flight.</p>
+
+<p>There was a heavy tread, with the kick of a boot against stair or
+skirting-board; and then came noisy steps along the landing. Josh was
+coming up in his boots! Bill Rann was at his wits' end. He backed down
+the garret-stairs, and met Josh at the foot. 'Are ye balmy?' he hissed
+fiercely, catching Josh by the collar and pulling him into the turn of
+the stairs. 'D'ye want another five stretch?'</p>
+
+<p>A loud creak and a soft thump sounded from behind the door at the other
+end of the landing; and then a match was struck. 'Keep back on the
+stairs,' Bill whispered. ''E's 'eard you.' Josh sat on a stair,
+perfectly still, with his legs drawn up out of sight from the door. Bill
+blew out his light. He would not venture open intimidation of Weech now,
+with Josh half muzzy, lest some burst of lunacy brought in the police.</p>
+
+<p>A soft treading of bare feet, the squeak of a door-handle, a light on
+the landing, and Aaron Weech stood at his open door in his shirt,
+candle in hand, his hair rumpled, his head aside, his mouth a little
+open, his unconscious gaze upward; listening intently. He took a slight
+step forward. And then Bill Rann's heart turned over and over.</p>
+
+<p>For Josh Perrott sprang from the stair, and, his shoulders humped and
+his face thrust out, walked deliberately across the landing. Weech
+turned his head quickly; his chin fell on his chest as by jaw-break;
+there were but dots amid the white of his eyes; his head lay slowly
+back, as the candle tilted and shot its grease on the floor. The door
+swung wider as his shoulder struck it, and he screamed, like a rabbit
+that sees a stoat. Then, with a wrench, he turned, letting drop the
+candle, and ran shrieking to the window, flung it open, and yelled into
+the black street. ''Elp! 'Elp! P'lice! <i>Murder! Murder! Murder!
+Murder!</i>'</p>
+
+<p>'Run, Josh&mdash;run, ye blasted fool!' roared Bill Rann, bounding across the
+landing, and snatching at his arm.</p>
+
+<p>'Go on&mdash;go on! I'm comin'!' Josh answered without turning his head. And
+Bill took the bottom flight at a jump. The candle flared as it lay on
+the floor, and spread a greasy pool about it.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Murder! Murder! Mu-r-r&mdash;</i>'</p>
+
+<p>Josh had the man by the shoulder, swung him back from the window,
+gripped his throat, and dragged him across the carpet as he might drag a
+cat, while Weech's arms waved uselessly, and his feet feebly sought a
+hold on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>'Now!' cried Josh Perrott, glaring on the writhen face below his own,
+and raising his case-knife in the manner of a cleaver, 'sing a hymn!
+Sing the hymn as'll do ye most good! You'll cheat me when ye can, an'
+when ye can't you'll put me five year in stir, eh? Sing a hymn, ye
+snivellin' nark!'</p>
+
+<p>From the street there came the noise of many hurrying feet and of a
+scattered shouting. Josh Perrott made an offer at slashing the slaty
+face, checked his arm, and went on.</p>
+
+<p>'You'll put down somethin' 'an'some at my break, will ye? An' you'll
+starve my wife an' kids all to bones an' teeth four year! Sing a hymn,
+ye cur!'</p>
+
+<p>He made another feint at slashing. Men were beating thunderously at the
+shop door, and there were shrill whistles.</p>
+
+<p>'Won't sing yer hymn? There ain't much time! My boy was goin' straight,
+an' earnin' wages: someone got 'im chucked. A man 'as time to think
+things out, in stir! Sing, ye son of a cow! Sing! Sing!'</p>
+
+<p>Twice the knife hacked the livid face. But the third hack was below the
+chin; and the face fell back.</p>
+
+<p>The bubbling Thing dropped in a heap, and put out the flaring candle.
+Without, the shouts gathered to a roar, and the door shook under heavy
+blows. 'Open&mdash;open the door!' cried a deep voice.</p>
+
+<p>He looked from the open window. There was a scrambling crowd, and more
+people were running in. Windows gaped, and thrust out noisy heads. The
+flash of a bull's-eye dazzled him, and he staggered back. 'Perrott!
+Perrott!' came a shout. He had but glanced out, but he was recognised.</p>
+
+<p>He threw down his knife, and made for the landing, slipping on the wet
+floor and stumbling against the Heap. There were shouts from behind the
+house now; they were few, but they were close. He dashed up the narrow
+stairs, floundered through the back garret, over bags and boxes and
+heaps of mingled commodities, and threw up the sash. Men were stumbling
+invisibly in the dark yard below. He got upon the sill, swung round by
+the dormer-frame, and went, hands and knees, along the roof. Yells and
+loud whistles rose clamant in the air, and his own name was shouted to
+and fro. Then the blows on the shop-door ceased with a splintering
+crash, and there was a trampling of feet on floor-boards.</p>
+
+<p>The roofs were irregular in shape and height, and his progress was slow.
+He aimed at reaching the roof of Father Sturt's old club building, still
+empty. He had had this in mind from the moment he climbed from the
+garret-window; for in the work of setting the drains in order an iron
+ventilating pipe had been carried up from the stable-yard to well above
+the roof. It was a stout pipe, close by the wall, to which it was
+clamped with iron attachments. Four years had passed since he had seen
+it, and he trusted to luck to find it still standing, for it seemed his
+only chance. Down below people scampered and shouted. Crowds had sprung
+out of the dark night as by magic; and the police&mdash;they must have been
+lying in wait in scores. It seemed a mere matter of seconds since he had
+scaled the back fence; and now people were tearing about the house
+behind him, and shouting out of windows to those below. He hoped that
+the iron pipe might not be gone.</p>
+
+<p>Good&mdash;it was there. He peered from the parapet down into the
+stable-yard, and the place seemed empty. He gripped the pipe with hands
+and knees, and descended.</p>
+
+<p>The alley had no back way: he must take his chance in Meakin Street. He
+peeped. At the street end there was a dark obstruction, set with spots
+of light: a row of police. That way was shut; he must try the Jago&mdash;Luck
+Row was almost opposite, and no Jago would betray him. The hunters were
+already on the roofs. Men shouted up to them from the street, and kept
+pace with them, coming nearer. He took a breath and dashed across,
+knocking a man over at the corner.</p>
+
+<p>Up Luck Row, into Old Jago Street he ran, past his own home, and across
+to a black doorway, just as Father Sturt, roused by the persistent din,
+opened his window. The passage was empty, and for an instant he paused,
+breathless. But there were howls without, and the pelting of many feet.
+The man knocked over at the corner had given the alarm, and the hunt was
+up.</p>
+
+<p>Into the back-yard and over the fence; through another passage into New
+Jago Street; with a notion to gain the courts by Honey Lane and so away.
+But he was thinking of the Jago as it had been&mdash;he had forgotten the
+demolishment. As he neared Jago Row the place of it lay suddenly before
+him&mdash;an open waste of eighty yards square, skirted by the straight
+streets and the yellow barracks, with the Board School standing dark
+among them. And along the straight streets more men were rushing, and
+more police. They were new-comers: why not venture over? He rubbed his
+cheek, for something like a film of gum clung to it. Then he
+remembered, and peered closely at his hands. Blood, sticking and drying
+and peeling; blood on hands and face, blood on clothes, without a doubt.
+To go abroad thus were to court arrest, were he known or not. It must be
+got off; but how? To go home was to give himself up. The police were
+there long since&mdash;they swarmed the Jago through. Some half-dismantled
+houses stood at hand, and he made for the nearest.</p>
+
+<p>There were cellars under these houses, reached from the back-yards. Many
+a Jago had been born, had lived, and had died in such a place. A cellar
+would hide him for an hour, while he groped himself clean as he might.
+Broken brickwork littered the space that had been the back-yard. Feeling
+in the dark for the steps, which stood in a little pit, his foot turned
+on a stone, and he pitched headlong.</p>
+
+<p>The cellar itself was littered with rubbish, and he lay among it a
+little while, breathless and bruised. When he tried to rise, he found
+his ankle useless. It was the old sprain, got at Mother Gapp's before
+his lagging, and ever ready to assert itself. He sat among the
+brickbats to pull off the boot&mdash;that was foul and sticky too&mdash;and he
+rubbed the ankle. He had been a fool to think of the cellar: why not any
+corner among the walls above? He had given way to the mere panic
+instinct to burrow, to hide himself in a hole, and he had chosen one
+wherefrom there was no second way of escape&mdash;none at all but by the
+steps he had fallen in at. Far better to have struck out boldly across
+the streets by Columbia Market to the canal: who could have seen the
+smears in the darkness? And in the canal he might have washed the lot
+away, secure from observation, under a bridge. The thing might be
+possible, even now, if he could stand the pain. But no, the foot was
+useless when he tried it. He was trapped like a rat. He rubbed and
+kneaded the ankle diligently, and managed to draw the boot on. But stand
+on both legs he could not. He might have crawled up the steps on hands
+and knees, but what was the use of that? So he sat, and waited.</p>
+
+<p>Knots of men went hurrying by, and he caught snatches of their talk.
+There had been a murder&mdash;a man was murdered in his bed&mdash;it was a
+woman&mdash;a man had murdered his wife&mdash;there were two murders&mdash;three&mdash;the
+tale went every way, but it was always Murder, Murder, Murder. Everybody
+was saying Murder: till in the passing footsteps, in the vague shouts in
+the distance, and presently in the mere black about him he heard the
+word still&mdash;Murder, Murder, Murder. He fell to contrasting the whispered
+fancy with the real screams in that bedroom. He wondered what Bill Rann
+thought of it all, and what had become of the james and the gimlets. He
+pictured the crowd in Old Jago Street, pushing into his room, talking
+about him, telling the news. He wondered if Hannah had been asleep when
+they came, and what she said when they told her. And more people hurried
+past the ruined house, all talking Murder, Murder, still Murder.</p>
+
+<p>The foot was horribly painful. Was it swelling? Yes, he thought it was;
+he rubbed it again. What would Dicky do? If only Dicky knew where he
+was! That might help. There was a new burst of shouts in the distance.
+What was that? Perhaps they had caught Bill Rann; but that was unlikely.
+They knew nothing of Bill&mdash;they had seen but one man. Perhaps they were
+carrying away the Heap on a shutter: that would be no nice job,
+especially down the steep stairs. There had been very little in the
+wash-house, and nothing in the next room; the garrets were pretty full
+of odd things, but no doubt the money was in the bedroom. The smell of
+stale pickles was very strong.</p>
+
+<p>So his thoughts chased one another&mdash;eager, trivial, crowded&mdash;till his
+head ached with their splitting haste. To take heed for the future, to
+plan escape, to design expedients&mdash;these were merely impossible, sitting
+there inactive in the dark. He thought of the pipe he had slid down,
+what it cost, why they put it there, who the man was that he ran against
+at Luck Row, whether or not he hurt him, what the police would do with
+the bloaters and cake and bacon at the shop, and&mdash;again&mdash;of the smell of
+stale pickles.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Father Sturt was up and dressed, standing guard on the landing outside
+the Perrotts' door. The stairs were full of Jagos&mdash;mostly
+women&mdash;constantly joined by new-comers, all anxious to batter the door
+and belabour the hidden family with noisy sympathy and sedulous
+inquiries: all, that is, except the oldest Mrs Walsh in the Jago, who,
+possessed by an unshakable conviction that Josh's wife must have 'druv
+'im to it,' had come in a shawl and a petticoat to give Hannah a piece
+of her mind. But all were driven back and sent grumbling away, by Father
+Sturt.</p>
+
+<p>Every passage from the Jago was held by the police, and a search from
+house to house was begun. With clear consciences the Jagos all could
+deny any knowledge of Josh Perrott's whereabouts; but a clear conscience
+was little valued in those parts, and one after another affirmed point
+blank that the man seen at the window was not Perrott at all, but a
+stranger who lived a long way off. This, of course, less by way of
+favouring the fugitive than of baffling the police: the Jago's first
+duty. But the police knew the worth of such talk, and the search went
+on.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it came to pass that in the grey of the morning a party in New
+Jago Street, after telling each other that the ruins must be carefully
+examined, climbed among the rubbish, and were startled by a voice from
+underground.</p>
+
+<p>'Awright,' cried Josh Perrott in the cellar. 'I'm done; it's a cop. Come
+an' 'elp me out o' this 'ole.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXIV" id="XXXIV"></a>XXXIV</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Lion and Unicorn had been fresh gilt since he was there before, but
+the white-headed old gaoler in the dock was much the same. And the big
+sword&mdash;what did they have a big sword for, stuck up there, over the red
+cushions, and what was the use of a sword six foot long? But perhaps it
+wasn't six foot after all&mdash;it looked longer than it was; and no doubt it
+was only for show, and probably a dummy with no blade. There was a
+well-dressed black man sitting down below among the lawyers. What did he
+want? Why did they let him in? A nice thing&mdash;to be made a show of, for
+niggers! And Josh Perrott loosened his neckcloth with an indignant tug
+of the forefinger, and went off into another train of thought. He had a
+throbbing, wavering headache, the outcome of thinking so hard about so
+many things. They were small things, and had nothing to do with his own
+business; but there were so many of them, and they all had to be got
+through at such a pace, and one thing led to another.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since they had taken him he had been oppressed by this plague of
+galloping thought, with few intervals of rest, when he could consider
+immediate concerns. But of these he made little trouble. The thing was
+done. Very well then, he would take his gruel like a man. He had done
+many a worse thing, he said, that had been thought less of.</p>
+
+<p>The evidence was a nuisance. What was the good of it all? Over and over
+and over again. At the inquest, at the police court, and now here.
+Repeated, laboriously taken down, and repeated again. And now it was
+worse than ever, for the judge insisted on making a note of everything,
+and wrote it down slowly, a word at a time. The witnesses were like
+barrel-organs, producing the same old tune mechanically, without
+changing a note. There was the policeman who was in Meakin Street at
+twelve-thirty on the morning of the fourth of the month, when he heard
+cries of Murder, and proceeded to the coffee-shop. There was the other
+policeman who also 'proceeded' there, and recognised the prisoner, whom
+he knew, at the first-floor window. And there was the sergeant who had
+found him in the cellar, and the doctor who had made an examination, and
+the knife, and the boots, and all of it. It was Murder, Murder, Murder
+still. Why? Wasn't it plain enough? He felt some interest in what was
+coming&mdash;in the sentence, and the black cap, and so on&mdash;never having seen
+a murder trial before. But all this repetition oppressed him vaguely
+amid the innumerable things he had to think of, one thing leading to
+another.</p>
+
+<p>Hannah and Dicky were there, sitting together behind the glass partition
+that rose at the side of the dock. Hannah's face was down in her hands,
+and Dicky's face was thin and white, and he sat with his neck stretched,
+his lips apart, his head aside to catch the smallest word. His eyes,
+too, were red with strained, unwinking attention. Josh felt vaguely
+that they might keep a bolder face, as he did himself. His sprained foot
+was still far from well, but he stood up, putting his weight on the
+other. He might have been allowed to sit if he had asked, but that would
+look like weakness.</p>
+
+<p>There was another judge this time, an older one, with spectacles. He had
+come solemnly in, after lunch, with a bunch of flowers in his hand, and
+Josh thought he made an odd figure in his long red gown. Why did he sit
+at the end of the bench, instead of in the middle, under the long sword?
+Perhaps the old gentleman, who sat there for a little while and then
+went away, was the Lord Mayor. That would account for it. There was
+another room behind the bedroom at Weech's, which he had never thought
+about. Perhaps the money was there, after all. Could they have missed
+any hiding place in the shop parlour? No: there was the round table,
+with the four chairs about it, and the little sideboard; besides the
+texts on the wall, and two china figures on the mantel-piece&mdash;that was
+all. There was a copper in the wash-house, but there was nothing in it.
+The garret was a very good place to keep things in; but there was a
+strong smell of stale pickles. He could smell it now&mdash;he had smelt it
+ever since.</p>
+
+<p>The judge stopped a witness to speak of a draught from a window. Josh
+Perrott watched the shutting of the window&mdash;they did it with a cord. He
+had not noticed a draught himself. But pigeons were flying outside the
+panes and resting on the chimney-stacks. Pud Palmer tried to keep
+pigeons in Jago Row, but one morning the trap was found empty. A
+poulterer gave fourpence each for them. They were ticketed at
+eighteenpence a pair in the shop, and that was fivepence profit apiece
+for the poulterer. Tenpence a pair profit on eleven pairs was nearly ten
+shillings&mdash;ten shillings all but tenpence. They wouldn't have given any
+more in Club Row. A man had a four-legged linnet in Club Row, but there
+was a show in Bethnal Green Road with a two-headed sheep. It was outside
+there that Ginger Stagg was pinched for lob-crawling. And so on, and so
+on, till his head buzzed again.</p>
+
+<p>His counsel was saying something. How long had he been talking? What was
+the good of it? He had told him that he had no defence. The lawyer was
+enlarging on the dead man's iniquities, talking of provocation, and the
+heat of passion, and the like. He was aiming desperately at a
+recommendation to mercy. That was mere foolery.</p>
+
+<p>But presently the judge began to sum up. They were coming to something
+at last. But it was merely the thrice-told evidence once more. The judge
+blinked at his notes, and went at it again; the policeman with his
+whistle, and the other with his lantern, and the doctor, and the
+sergeant, and the rest. It was shorter this time, though. Josh Perrott
+turned and looked at the clock behind him, with the faces over it,
+peering from the gallery. But when he turned to face the judge again he
+had forgotten the time, and crowded trivialities were racing through the
+narrow gates of his brain once more.</p>
+
+<p>There was a cry for silence, and then a fresh voice spoke. 'Gentlemen of
+the jury, have you agreed upon your verdict?'</p>
+
+<p>'We have.' The foreman was an agitated, colourless man, and he spoke in
+a low tone.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty, or not guilty?'</p>
+
+<p>'Guilty.'</p>
+
+<p>Yes, that was right; this was the real business. His head was clear and
+ready now.</p>
+
+<p>'And is that the verdict of you all?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes.'</p>
+
+<p>Was that Hannah sobbing?</p>
+
+<p>A pale parson in his black gown came walking along by the bench, and
+stood like a tall ghost at the judge's side, his eyes raised and his
+hands clasped. The judge took a black thing from the seat beside him,
+and arranged it on his head. It was a sort of soft mortarboard, Josh
+noted curiously, with a large silk tassel hanging over one side, giving
+the judge, with his wig and his spectacles and his red gown, a horribly
+jaunty look. No brain could be clearer than Josh Perrott's now.</p>
+
+<p>'Prisoner at the bar, have you anything to say why sentence of death
+should not be passed on you according to law?'</p>
+
+<p>'No sir&mdash;I done it. On'y 'e was a worse man than me!'</p>
+
+<p>The Clerk of Arraigns sank into his place, and the judge spoke.</p>
+
+<p>'Joshua Perrott, you have been convicted, on evidence that can leave no
+doubt whatever of your guilt in the mind of any rational person, of the
+horrible crime of wilful murder. The circumstances of your awful offence
+there is no need to recapitulate, but they were of the most brutal and
+shocking character. You deliberately, and with preparation, broke into
+the house of the man whose death you have shortly to answer for in a
+higher court than this: whether you broke in with a design of robbery as
+well as of revenge by murder I know not, nor is it my duty to consider:
+but you there, with every circumstance of callous ferocity, sent the
+wretched man to that last account which you must shortly render for
+yourself. Of the ill-spent life of that miserable man, your victim, it
+is not for me to speak, nor for you to think. And I do most earnestly
+beseech you to use the short time yet remaining to you on this earth in
+true repentance, and in making your peace with Almighty God. It is my
+duty to pronounce sentence of that punishment which not I, but the law
+of this country, imposes for the crime which you have committed. The
+sentence of the Court is: that you be taken to the place whence you
+came, and thence to a place of execution: and that you be there Hanged
+by the Neck till you be Dead: and may the Lord have Mercy on your Soul!'</p>
+
+<p>'Amen!' It was from the tall black figure.</p>
+
+<p>Well, well, that was over. The gaoler touched his arm. Right. But first
+he took a quick glance through the glass partition. Hannah was falling
+over, or something,&mdash;a mere rusty swaying bundle,&mdash;and Dicky was holding
+her up with both arms. Dicky's face was damp and grey, and twitching
+lines were in his cheeks. Josh took a step toward the partition, but
+they hurried him away.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXV" id="XXXV"></a>XXXV</h2>
+
+
+<p>All this hard thinking would be over in half an hour or so. What was to
+come now didn't matter; no more than a mere punch in the eye. The worst
+was over on Saturday, and he had got through that all right. Hannah was
+very bad, and so was Dicky. Em cried in a bewildered sort of way,
+because the others did. Little Josh, conceiving that his father was
+somehow causing all the tears, kicked and swore at him. He tried to get
+Hannah to smile at this, but it was no go; and they had to carry her out
+at last. Dicky was well-plucked though, bad as he was. He felt him shake
+and choke when he kissed him, but he walked out straight and steady,
+with the two children. Well, it was over....</p>
+
+<p>He hoped they would get up a break in the Jago for Hannah and the
+youngsters. His own break had never come off&mdash;they owed him one. The
+last break he was at was at Mother Gapp's, before the Dove-Laners fell
+through the floor. It must have cost Mother Gapp a deal of money to put
+in the new floor; but then she must have made a lot in her time, what
+with one thing and another. There was the fencing, and the houses she
+had bought in Honey Lane, and the two fourpenny doss-houses in Hoxton
+that they said were hers, and&mdash;well, nobody could say what else. Some
+said she came of the gipsies that used to live at the Mount years ago.
+The Mount was a pretty thick place now, but not so thick as the Jago:
+the Jagos were thick as glue and wide as Broad Street. Bob the Bender
+fell in Broad Street, toy-getting, and got a stretch and a half....</p>
+
+<p>Yes, yes, of course, they always tolled a bell. But it was rather
+confusing, with things to think about.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, they had come at last. Come, there was nothing more to think about
+now; nothing but to take it game. Hold tight&mdash;Jago hold tight.... 'No
+thank you, sir&mdash;nothing to say, special. On'y much obliged to ye, thank
+ye kindly, for the grub an'&mdash;an' bein' kind an' wot not. Thanks all of
+ye, come to that. Specially you, sir.' It was the tall black figure
+again....</p>
+
+<p>What, this was the chap, was it? Seedy-looking. Sort of undertaker's man
+to look at. All right&mdash;straps. Not cords to tie, then. Waist; wrists;
+elbows; more straps dangling below&mdash;do them presently. This was how they
+did it, then.... This way?</p>
+
+<p>'I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth
+in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and
+believeth in Me shall never die.'</p>
+
+<p>A very big gate, this, all iron, painted white. Round to the right. Not
+very far, they told him. It was dark in the passage, but the door led
+into the yard, where it was light and open, and sparrows were
+twittering. Another door: in a shed.</p>
+
+<p>This was the place. All white, everywhere&mdash;frame too; not black after
+all. Up the steps.... Hold tight: not much longer. Stand there? Very
+well.</p>
+
+<p>'Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full
+of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower: he fleeth as it
+were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.</p>
+
+<p>'In the midst of life....'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXVI" id="XXXVI"></a>XXXVI</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was but a little crowd that stood at the Old Bailey corner while the
+bell tolled, to watch for the black flag. This was not a popular murder.
+Josh Perrott was not a man who had been bred to better things; he did
+not snivel and rant in the dock; and he had not butchered his wife nor
+his child, nor anybody with a claim on his gratitude or affection; so
+that nobody sympathised with him, nor got up a petition for pardon, nor
+wrote tearful letters to the newspapers. And the crowd that watched for
+the black flag was a small one, and half of it came from the Jago.</p>
+
+<p>While it was watching, and while the bell was tolling, a knot of people
+stood at the Perrotts' front-doorway, in Old Jago Street. Father Sturt
+went across as soon as the sleepers of the night had been seen away
+from the shelter, and spoke to Kiddo Cook, who stood at the stair-foot
+to drive off intruders.</p>
+
+<p>'They say she's been settin' up all night, Father,' Kiddo reported, in a
+hushed voice. 'An' Poll's jest looked in at the winder from Walsh's, and
+says she can see 'em all kneelin' round a chair with that little clock
+o' theirs on it. It's&mdash;it's more'n 'alf an hour yut.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall come here myself presently, and relieve you. Can you wait? You
+mustn't neglect trade, you know.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'll wait all day, Father, if ye like. Nobody sha'n't disturb 'em.'</p>
+
+<p>When Father Sturt returned from his errand, 'Have you heard anything?'
+he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'No, Father,' answered Kiddo Cook. 'They ain't moved.'</p>
+
+<p>There were two faint notes from a distant steeple, and then the bell of
+St Leonards beat out the inexorable hour.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XXXVII" id="XXXVII"></a>XXXVII</h2>
+
+
+<p>Kiddo Cook prospered. The stall was a present fact, and the awning was
+not far off; indeed, he was vigilantly in search of a second-hand one,
+not too much worn. But with all his affluence he was not often drunk.
+Nothing could be better than his pitch&mdash;right out in the High Street, in
+the busiest part, and hard by the London and County branch bank. They
+called it Kiddo's Bank in the Jago, and made jokes about alleged
+deposits of his. If you bought a penn'orth of greens from Kiddo, said
+facetious Jagos, he didn't condescend to take the money himself; he gave
+you a slip of paper, and you paid at the bank. And Kiddo had indulged in
+a stroke of magnificence that no other Jago would have thought of. He
+had taken <i>two</i> rooms, in the new County Council dwellings. The secret
+was that Father Sturt had agreed to marry Kiddo Cook and Pigeony Poll.
+There would be plenty for both to do, what with the stall and the
+regular round with the barrow.</p>
+
+<p>The wedding-day came when Hannah Perrott had been one week a widow. For
+a few days Father Sturt had left her alone, and had guarded her privacy.
+Then, seeing that she gave no sign, he went with what quiet comfort he
+might, and bespoke her attention to her concerns. He invented some
+charing work in his rooms for her. She did it very badly, and if he left
+her long alone, she would be found on the floor, with her face in a
+chair-seat, crying weakly. But the work was something for her to do and
+to think about, and by dint of bustling it and magnifying its
+importance, Father Sturt brought her to some degree of mindfulness and
+calm.</p>
+
+<p>Dicky walked that morning in a sort of numb, embittered fury. What
+should he do now? His devilmost. Spare nobody and stop at nothing. Old
+Beveridge was right that morning years ago. The Jago had got him, and it
+held him fast. Now he went doubly sealed of the outcasts: a Jago with a
+hanged father. Father Sturt talked of work, but who would give <i>him</i>
+work? And why do it, in any case? What came of it before? No, he was a
+Jago and the world's enemy; Father Sturt was the only good man in it; as
+for the rest, he would spoil them when he could. There was something for
+to-morrow night, if only he could get calmed down enough by then. A
+builder's yard in Kingsland with an office in a loft, and money in a
+common desk. Tommy Rann had found it, and they must do it together; if
+only he could get this odd numbness off him, and have his head clear. So
+much crying, perhaps, and so much trying not to, till his head was like
+to burst. Deep-eyed and pale, he dragged round into Edge Lane, and so
+into New Jago Street.</p>
+
+<p>Jerry Gullen's canary was harnessed to the barrow, and Jerry himself was
+piling the barrow with rags and bottles. Dicky stood and looked; he
+thought he would rub Canary's head, but then he changed his mind, and
+did not move. Jerry Gullen glanced at him furtively once or twice, and
+then said: 'Good ole moke for wear, ain't 'e?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yus,' Dicky answered moodily, his talk half random. ''E'll peg out soon
+now.'</p>
+
+<p>''Im? Not 'im. Wy, I bet 'e'll live longer'n you will. <i>'E</i> ain't goin'
+to die.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think 'e'd like to,' said Dicky, and slouched on.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, Canary would be better off, dead. So would others. It would be a
+comfortable thing for himself if he could die quietly then and there.
+But it would never do for mother and the children to be left helpless.
+How good for them all to go off easily together, and wake in some
+pleasant place, say a place like Father Sturt's sitting-room, and
+perhaps find&mdash;but there, what foolishness!</p>
+
+<p>What was this unendurable stupor that clung about him like a net? He
+knew everything clearly enough, but it was all in an atmosphere of dull
+heedlessness. There would be some relief in doing something violent&mdash;in
+smashing something to little pieces with a hammer.</p>
+
+<p>He came to the ruined houses. There was a tumult of yells, and a crowd
+of thirty or forty lads went streaming across the open waste, waving
+sticks.</p>
+
+<p>'Come on! come on, Jago! 'Ere they are!'</p>
+
+<p>A fight! Ah, what more welcome! And Dove Lane, too&mdash;Dove Lane, that had
+taken to bawling the taunt, 'Jago cut-throats,' since ...</p>
+
+<p>He was in the thick of the raid. 'Come on, Jago! Jago! 'Ere they are!'
+Past the Board School and through Honey Lane they went, and into Dove
+Lane territory. A small crowd of Dove-Laners broke and fled. Straight
+ahead the Jagos went, till they were suddenly taken in flank at a
+turning by a full Dove Lane mob. The Jagos were broken by the rush, but
+they fought stoutly, and the street was filled with a surge of combat.</p>
+
+<p>'Jago! Jago hold tight!'</p>
+
+<p>Thin, wasted and shaken, Dicky fought like a tiger. He had no stick till
+he floored a Dove-Laner and took his from him, but then he bludgeoned
+apace, callous to every blow, till he fought through the thick, and
+burst out at the edge of the fray. He pulled his cap tight, and swung
+back, almost knocking over, but disregarding, a leather-aproned, furtive
+hunchback, who turned and came at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>'Jago! Jago hold tight!' yelled Dicky Perrott. 'Come on, Father Sturt's
+boys!'</p>
+
+<p>He was down. Just a punch under the arm from behind. As he rolled, face
+under, he caught a single glimpse of the hunchback, running. But what
+was this&mdash;all this?</p>
+
+<p>A shout went up. 'Stabbed! Chived! They chived Dicky Perrott!'</p>
+
+<p>The fight melted. Somebody turned Dicky on his back, and he moaned, and
+lay gasping. He lifted his dabbled hands, and looked at them, wondering.
+They tried to lift him, but the blood poured so fast that they put him
+down. Somebody had gone for a surgeon.</p>
+
+<p>'Take me 'ome,' said Dicky, faintly, with an odd gurgle in his voice.
+'Not 'awspital.'</p>
+
+<p>The surgeon came running, with policemen at his heels. He ripped away
+the clothes from about the wound, and shook his head. It was the lung.
+Water was brought, and cloths, and an old door. They put Dicky on the
+door, and carried him toward the surgery; and two lads who stayed by him
+were sent to bring his friends.</p>
+
+<p>The bride and bridegroom, meeting the news on the way home, set off at a
+run, and Father Sturt followed.</p>
+
+<p>'Good Gawd, Dicky,' cried Poll, tearing her way to the shutter as it
+stopped at the surgery door, 'wot's this?'</p>
+
+<p>Dicky's eye fell on the flowered bonnet that graced the wedding, and his
+lip lifted with the shade of a smile. 'Luck, Pidge!'</p>
+
+<p>He was laid out in the surgery. A crowd stood about the door, while
+Father Sturt went in. The vicar lifted his eyebrows questioningly, and
+the surgeon shook his head. It was a matter of minutes.</p>
+
+<p>Father Sturt bent over and took Dicky's hand. 'My poor Dicky,' he said,
+'who did this?'</p>
+
+<p>'Dunno, Fa'er.'</p>
+
+<p>The lie&mdash;the staunch Jago lie. Thou shalt not nark.</p>
+
+<p>'Fetch mother an' the kids. Fa'er!'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, my boy?'</p>
+
+<p>'Tell Mist' Beveridge there's 'nother way out&mdash;better.'</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE END</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Child of the Jago, by Arthur Morrison
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Child of the Jago, by Arthur Morrison
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Child of the Jago
+
+Author: Arthur Morrison
+
+Release Date: August 3, 2011 [EBook #36958]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHILD OF THE JAGO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
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+
+                                   A CHILD OF THE JAGO
+
+                                   BY ARTHUR MORRISON
+
+                            AUTHOR OF 'TALES OF MEAN STREETS'
+
+
+    THIRD EDITION
+
+    METHUEN & CO.
+    36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
+    LONDON
+    1897
+
+
+                   TO
+           ARTHUR OSBORNE JAY
+    VICAR OF HOLY TRINITY, SHOREDITCH
+
+
+
+    _... Woe unto the foolish prophets, that
+     follow their own spirit, and have seen
+     nothing!..._
+
+    _Because, even because they have seduced
+     my people, saying, Peace; and there
+     was no peace; and one built up a
+     wall, and lo, others daubed it with
+     untempered mortar:_
+
+    _Say unto them which daub it with untempered
+     mortar, that it shall fall:
+     there shall be an overflowing shower;
+     and ye, O great hailstones, shall fall;
+     and a stormy wind shall rend it._
+
+    _Lo, when the wall is fallen, shall it not
+     be said unto you, Where is the daubing
+     wherewith ye have daubed it?--_
+
+
+        EZEKIEL xiii. 3 ... 10 12.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
+
+
+I am glad to take this, the first available opportunity, to acknowledge
+the kindness with which _A Child of the Jago_ has been received: both by
+the reading public, from which I have received many gratifying
+assurances that what I have tried to say has not altogether failed of
+its effect: and by the reviewers, the most of whom have written in very
+indulgent terms.
+
+I think indeed, that I am the more gratified by the fact that this
+reception has not been unanimous: because an outcry and an opposition,
+even from an unimportant minority, are proofs that I have succeeded in
+saying, however imperfectly, something that was worth being said. Under
+the conditions of life as we know it there is no truth worth telling
+that will not interfere with some hearer's comfort. Various objections
+have been made to _A Child of the Jago_, and many of them had already
+been made to _Tales of Mean Streets_. And it has been the way of the
+objectors as well as the way of many among the kindest of my critics, to
+call me a 'realist.' The word has been used sometimes, it would seem, in
+praise; sometimes in mere indifference as one uses a phrase of
+convenient description; sometimes by way of an irremediable reproach. It
+is natural, then, not merely that I should wish to examine certain among
+the objections made to my work, but that I should feel some interest in
+the definition and description of a realist. A matter never made clear
+to me.
+
+Now it is a fact that I have never called myself a 'realist,' and I have
+never put forth any work as 'realism.' I decline the labels of the
+schoolmen and the sophisters: being a simple writer of tales, who takes
+whatever means lie to his hand to present life as he sees it; who
+insists on no process; and who refuses to be bound by any formula or
+prescription prepared by the cataloguers and the pigeon-holers of
+literature.
+
+So it happens that when those who use the word 'realist' use it with no
+unanimity of intent and with a loose, inapprehensive application, it is
+not easy for me, who repudiate it altogether, to make a guess at its
+meaning. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the man who is called a
+'realist' is one who, seeing things with his own eyes, discards the
+conventions of the schools, and presents his matter in individual terms
+of art. For awhile the schoolmen abuse him as a realist; and in twenty
+years' time, if his work have life in it, he becomes a classic.
+Constable was called a realist; so was Corot. Who calls these painters
+realists now? The history of Japanese art affords a continuous
+illustration. From the day when Iwasa Matahei impudently arose and dared
+to take his subjects from the daily life of the people, to the day when
+Hiroshige, casting away the last rag of propriety, adventurously drew a
+cast shadow, in flat defiance of all the canons of Tosa and Kano--in all
+this time, and through all the crowded history of the School of Ukioye,
+no artist bringing something of his own to his art but was damned for a
+realist. Even the classic Harunobu did not escape. Look now at the work
+of these men, and the label seems grotesque enough. So it goes through
+the making of all art. A man with the courage of his own vision
+interprets what he sees in fresh terms, and gives to things a new
+reality and an immediate presence. The schoolmen peer with dulled eyes
+from amid the heap of precedents and prescriptions about them, and,
+distracted by seeing a thing sanctioned neither by precedent nor by
+prescription, dub the man realist, and rail against him for that his
+work fits none of their pigeon-holes. And from without the schools many
+cry out and complain: for truth is strong meat, and the weakling stomach
+turns against it, except in minim doses smothered in treacle. Thus we
+hear the feeble plea that the function of imagination is the distortion
+of fact: the piteous demand that the artist should be shut up in a
+flower-garden, and forbidden to peep through the hedge into the world.
+And they who know nothing of beauty, who are innately incapable of
+comprehending it, mistake it for mere prettiness, and call aloud for
+comfits; and among them that cannot understand, such definitions of the
+aims of art are bandied, as mean, if they mean anything, that art finds
+its most perfect expression in pink lollipops and gilt boxes. But in
+the end the truth prevails, if it be well set forth; and the schoolmen,
+groaning in their infinite labour, wearily write another prescription,
+admit another precedent, and make another pigeon-hole.
+
+I have been asked, in print, if I think that there is no phase of life
+which the artist may not touch. Most certainly I think this. More, I
+know it. It is the artist's privilege to seek his material where he
+pleases, and it is no man's privilege to say him nay. If the community
+have left horrible places and horrible lives before his eyes, then the
+fault is the community's; and to picture these places and these lives
+becomes not merely his privilege, but his duty. It was my fate to
+encounter a place in Shoreditch, where children were born and reared in
+circumstances which gave them no reasonable chance of living decent
+lives: where they were born fore-damned to a criminal or semi-criminal
+career. It was my experience to learn the ways of this place, to know
+its inhabitants, to talk with them, eat, drink, and work with them. For
+the existence of this place, and for the evils it engendered, the
+community was, and is, responsible; so that every member of the
+community was, and is, responsible in his degree. If I had been a rich
+man I might have attempted to discharge my peculiar responsibility in
+one way; if I had been a statesman I might have tried another. Being
+neither of these things, but a mere writer of fiction, I sought to do my
+duty by writing a tale wherein I hoped to bring the conditions of this
+place within the apprehension of others. There are those who say that I
+should have turned away my eyes and passed by on the other side: on the
+very respectable precedent of the priest and the Levite in the parable.
+
+Now, when the tale was written and published it was found, as I have
+said, to cause discomfort to some persons. It is needless to say more of
+the schoolmen. Needless, too, to say much of the merely genteel: who
+were shocked to read of low creatures, as Kiddo Cook and Pigeony Poll,
+and to find my pages nowhere illuminated by a marquis. Of such are they
+who delight to read of two men in velvet and feathers perforating each
+other's stomachs with swords; while Josh Perrott and Billy Leary,
+punching each other's heads, present a scene too sickening and brutal to
+consider without disgust. And it was in defiance of the maunderings of
+such as these that Charles Lamb wrote much of his essay _On the Genius
+and Character of Hogarth_. But chiefly this book of mine disturbed those
+who had done nothing, and preferred to do nothing, by way of discharging
+their responsibility toward the Jago and the people in it. The
+consciousness of duty neglected is discomforting, and personal comfort
+is the god of their kind. They firmly believe it to be the sole function
+of art to minister to their personal comfort--as upholstery does. They
+find it comfortable to shirk consideration of the fate of the Jago
+children, to shut their eyes to it, to say that all is well and the
+whole world virtuous and happy. And this mental attitude they nickname
+optimism, and vaunt it--exult in it as a quality. So that they cry out
+at the suggestion that it is no more than a selfish vice; and finding
+truth where they had looked for the materials of another debauch of
+self-delusion, they moan aloud: they protest, and they demand as their
+sacred right that the bitter cup be taken from before them. They have
+moaned and protested at _A Child of the Jago_, and, craven and
+bewildered, any protest seemed good enough to them. And herein they have
+not wanted for allies among them that sit in committee-rooms, and
+tinker. For your professed philanthropist, following his own spirit, and
+seeing nothing, honestly resents the demonstration that his tinkering
+profits little. There is a story current in the East End of London, of a
+distracted lady who, being assailed with a request for the loan of a
+saucepan, defended herself in these words:--'Tell yer mother I can't
+lend 'er the saucepan, consekince o' 'avin' lent it to Mrs Brown,
+besides which I'm a-usin' of it meself, an' moreover it's gone to be
+mended, an' what's more I ain't got one.' In a like spirit of lavish
+objection it has been proclaimed in a breath that I transgress:--because
+(1) I should not have written of the Jago in all the nakedness of truth;
+(2) my description is not in the least like; (3) moreover, it is
+exaggerated; (4) though it may be true, it is quite unnecessary, because
+the Jago was already quite familiar, and everybody knew all about it;
+(5) the Jago houses have been pulled down; and (6) there never was any
+such place as the Jago at all.
+
+To objections thus handsomely variegated it is not easy to reply with
+the tripping brevity wherewith they may be stated; and truly it is
+little reply that they call for, except, perhaps, in so far as they may
+be taken to impugn the sincerity of my work and the accuracy of my
+picture. A few of the objectors have caught up enough of their wits to
+strive after a war in my own country. They take hold of my technical
+method, and accuse me of lack of 'sympathy'; they claim that if I write
+of the Jago I should do so 'even weeping.' Now, my technical method is
+my own, and is deliberately designed to achieve a certain result, as is
+the method of every man--painter, poet, sculptor, or novelist--who is
+not the slave and the plaything of his material. My tale is the tale of
+my characters, and I have learned better than to thrust myself and my
+emotions between them and my reader. The cant of the charge stares all
+too plainly from the face of it. It is not that these good people wish
+me to write 'even weeping': for how do they know whether I weep or not?
+No: their wish is, not that I shall weep, but that I shall weep
+obscenely in the public gaze. In other words, that I shall do their
+weeping for them, as a sort of emotional bedesman: that I shall make
+public parade of sympathy in their behalf, so that they may keep their
+own sympathy for themselves, and win comfort from the belief that they
+are eased of their just responsibility by vicarious snivelling.
+
+But the protest, that my picture of the Jago is untrue, is another
+thing. For the most part it has found very vague expression, but there
+are instances of rash excursion into definiteness. Certain passages have
+been denoted as exaggerations--as impossibilities. Now, I must confess
+that, foreseeing such adventurous indiscretions, I had, for my own
+diversion, set _A Child of the Jago_ with traps. For certain years I
+have lived in the East End of London, and have been, not an occasional
+visitor, but a familiar and equal friend in the house of the East-Ender
+in all his degrees; for, though the steps between be smaller, there are
+more social degrees in the East End than ever in the West. In this
+experience I have seen and I have heard things that persons sitting in
+committee-rooms would call diabolical fable; nevertheless, I have seen
+them, and heard them. But it was none of my design to write of extreme
+instances: typical facts were all I wanted; these, I knew, would be
+met--or shirked--with incredulity; so that, whenever I saw reason to
+anticipate a charge of exaggeration--as for instance, in the matter of
+faction fighting--I made my typical incident the cold transcript of a
+simple fact, an ordinary, easy-going fact, a fact notorious in the
+neighbourhood, and capable of any amount of reasonable proof. If I
+touched my fact at all, it was to subdue it; that and no more. The traps
+worked well. Not one definite charge of exaggeration has been flung but
+it has been aimed at one of the normal facts I had provided as a target:
+not one. Sometimes the effect has had a humour of its own; as when a
+critic in a literary journal, beginning by selecting two of my norms as
+instances of 'palpable exaggeration,' went on to assure me that there
+was no need to describe such life as the life in the Jago, because it
+was already perfectly familiar to everybody.
+
+Luckily I need not vindicate my accuracy. That has been done for me
+publicly by independent and altogether indisputable authority. In
+particular, the devoted vicar of the parish, which I have called the
+Jago, has testified quite unreservedly to the truth of my presentation.
+Others also, with special knowledge, have done the same; and though I
+refer to them, and am grateful for their support, it is with no
+prejudice to the validity of my own authority. For not only have I lived
+in the East End of London (which one may do, and yet never see it) but
+observation is my trade.
+
+I have remarked in more than one place the expression of a foolish fancy
+that because the houses of the Old Jago have been pulled down, the Jago
+difficulty has been cleared out of the way. That is far from being the
+case. The Jago, as mere bricks and mortar, is gone. But the Jago in
+flesh and blood still lives, and is crowding into neighbourhoods already
+densely over-populated.
+
+In conclusion: the plan and the intention of my story made it requisite
+that, in telling it, I should largely adhere to fact; and I did so. If I
+write other tales different in scope and design, I shall adhere to fact
+or neglect it as may seem good to me: regardless of anybody's
+classification as a realist, or as anything else. For though I have made
+a suggestion, right or wrong, as to what a realist may be, whether I am
+one or not is no concern of mine; but the concern (if it be anybody's)
+of the tabulators and the watersifters.
+
+A. M.
+
+_February 1897._
+
+
+[Illustration: The Old Jago; Sketch Plan]
+
+
+
+
+A CHILD OF THE JAGO
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+It was past the mid of a summer night in the Old Jago. The narrow street
+was all the blacker for the lurid sky; for there was a fire in a farther
+part of Shoreditch, and the welkin was an infernal coppery glare. Below,
+the hot, heavy air lay, a rank oppression, on the contorted forms of
+those who made for sleep on the pavement: and in it, and through it all,
+there rose from the foul earth and the grimed walls a close, mingled
+stink--the odour of the Jago.
+
+From where, off Shoreditch High Street, a narrow passage, set across
+with posts, gave menacing entrance on one end of Old Jago Street, to
+where the other end lost itself in the black beyond Jago Row; from
+where Jago Row began south at Meakin Street, to where it ended north at
+Honey Lane--there the Jago, for one hundred years the blackest pit in
+London, lay and festered; and half-way along Old Jago Street a narrow
+archway gave upon Jago Court, the blackest hole in all that pit.
+
+A square of two hundred and fifty yards or less--that was all there was
+of the Jago. But in that square the human population swarmed in
+thousands. Old Jago Street, New Jago Street, Half Jago Street lay
+parallel, east and west: Jago Row at one end and Edge Lane at the other
+lay parallel also, stretching north and south: foul ways all. What was
+too vile for Kate Street, Seven Dials, and Ratcliff Highway in its worst
+day, what was too useless, incapable and corrupt--all that teemed in the
+Old Jago.
+
+Old Jago Street lay black and close under the quivering red sky; and
+slinking forms, as of great rats, followed one another quickly between
+the posts in the gut by the High Street, and scattered over the Jago.
+For the crowd about the fire was now small, the police was there in
+force, and every safe pocket had been tried. Soon the incursion ceased,
+and the sky, flickering and brightening no longer, settled to a sullen
+flush. On the pavement some writhed wearily, longing for sleep; others,
+despairing of it, sat and lolled, and a few talked. They were not there
+for lack of shelter, but because in this weather repose was less
+unlikely in the street than within doors: and the lodgings of the few
+who nevertheless abode at home were marked here and there by the lights
+visible from the windows. For in this place none ever slept without a
+light, because of three kinds of vermin that light in some sort keeps at
+bay: vermin which added to existence here a terror not to be guessed by
+the unafflicted: who object to being told of it. For on them that lay
+writhen and gasping on the pavement; on them that sat among them; on
+them that rolled and blasphemed in the lighted rooms; on every moving
+creature in this, the Old Jago, day and night, sleeping and walking, the
+third plague of Egypt, and more, lay unceasing.
+
+The stifling air took a further oppression from the red sky. By the
+dark entrance to Jago Court a man rose, flinging out an oath, and sat
+with his head bowed in his hands.
+
+'Ah--h--h--h,' he said. 'I wish I was dead: an' kep' a cawfy shop.' He
+looked aside from his hands at his neighbours; but Kiddo Cook's ideal of
+heaven was no new thing, and the sole answer was a snort from a dozing
+man a yard away.
+
+Kiddo Cook felt in his pocket and produced a pipe and a screw of paper.
+'This is a bleed'n' unsocial sort o' evenin' party, this is,' he said,
+'An' 'ere's the on'y real toff in the mob with ardly 'arf a pipeful
+left, an' no lights. D' y' 'ear, me lord'--leaning toward the dozing
+neighbour--'got a match?'
+
+'Go t' 'ell!'
+
+'O wot 'orrid langwidge! It's shocking, blimy. Arter that y' ought to
+find me a match. Come on.'
+
+'Go t' 'ell!'
+
+A lank, elderly man, who sat with his back to the wall, pushed up a
+battered tall hat from his eyes, and, producing a box of matches,
+exclaimed 'Hell? And how far's that? You're in it!' He flung abroad a
+bony hand, and glanced upward. Over his forehead a greasy black curl
+dangled and shook as he shuddered back against the wall. 'My God, there
+can be no hell after this!'
+
+'Ah,' Kiddo Cook remarked, as he lit his pipe in the hollow of his
+hands, 'that's a comfort, Mr Beveridge, any'ow.' He returned the
+matches, and the old man, tilting his hat forward, was silent.
+
+A woman, gripping a shawl about her shoulders, came furtively along from
+the posts, with a man walking in her tracks--a little unsteadily. He was
+not of the Jago, but a decent young workman, by his dress. The sight
+took Kiddo Cook's idle eye, and when the couple had passed, he said
+meditatively: 'There's Billy Leary in luck ag'in: 'is missis do pick 'em
+up, s'elp me. I'd carry the cosh meself if I'd got a woman like 'er.'
+
+Cosh-carrying was near to being the major industry of the Jago. The cosh
+was a foot length of iron rod, with a knob at one end, and a hook (or a
+ring) at the other. The craftsman, carrying it in his coat sleeve,
+waited about dark staircase corners till his wife (married or not)
+brought in a well drunken stranger: when, with a sudden blow behind the
+head, the stranger was happily coshed, and whatever was found on him as
+he lay insensible was the profit on the transaction. In the hands of
+capable practitioners this industry yielded a comfortable subsistence
+for no great exertion. Most, of course, depended on the woman: whose
+duty it was to keep the other artist going in subjects. There were
+legends of surprising ingatherings achieved by wives of especial
+diligence: one of a woman who had brought to the cosh some
+six-and-twenty on a night of public rejoicing. This was, however, a
+story years old, and may have been no more than an exemplary fiction,
+designed, like a Sunday School book, to convey a counsel of perfection
+to the dutiful matrons of the Old Jago.
+
+The man and woman vanished in a doorway near the Jago Row end, where,
+for some reason, dossers were fewer than about the portal of Jago Court.
+There conversation flagged, and a broken snore was heard. It was a
+quiet night, as quietness was counted in the Jago; for it was too hot
+for most to fight in that stifling air--too hot to do more than turn on
+the stones and swear. Still the last hoarse yelps of a combat of women
+came intermittently from Half Jago Street in the further confines.
+
+In a little while something large and dark was pushed forth from the
+door-opening near Jago Row which Billy Leary's spouse had entered. The
+thing rolled over, and lay tumbled on the pavement, for a time unnoted.
+It might have been yet another would-be sleeper, but for its stillness.
+Just such a thing it seemed, belike, to two that lifted their heads and
+peered from a few yards off, till they rose on hands and knees and crept
+to where it lay: Jago rats both. A man it was; with a thick smear across
+his face, and about his head the source of the dark trickle that sought
+the gutter deviously over the broken flags. The drab stuff of his
+pockets peeped out here and there in a crumpled bunch, and his waistcoat
+gaped where the watch-guard had been. Clearly, here was an uncommonly
+remunerative cosh--a cosh so good that the boots had been neglected,
+and remained on the man's feet. These the kneeling two unlaced deftly,
+and, rising, prize in hand, vanished in the deeper shadow of Jago Row.
+
+A small boy, whom they met full tilt at the corner, staggered out to the
+gutter and flung a veteran curse after them. He was a slight child, by
+whose size you might have judged his age at five. But his face was of
+serious and troubled age. One who knew the children of the Jago, and
+could tell, might have held him eight, or from that to nine.
+
+He replaced his hands in his trousers pockets, and trudged up the
+street. As he brushed by the coshed man he glanced again toward Jago
+Row, and, jerking his thumb that way, 'Done 'im for 'is boots,' he
+piped. But nobody marked him till he reached Jago Court, when old
+Beveridge, pushing back his hat once more, called sweetly and silkily,
+'Dicky Perrott!' and beckoned with his finger.
+
+The boy approached, and as he did so the man's skeleton
+hand suddenly shot out and gripped him by the collar.
+'It--never--does--to--see--too--much!' Beveridge said, in a series of
+shouts, close to the boy's ear. 'Now go home,' he added, in a more
+ordinary tone, with a push to make his meaning plain: and straightway
+relapsed against the wall.
+
+The boy scowled and backed off the pavement. His ragged jacket was
+coarsely made from one much larger, and he hitched the collar over his
+shoulder as he shrank toward a doorway some few yards on. Front doors
+were used merely as firewood in the Old Jago, and most had been burnt
+there many years ago. If perchance one could have been found still on
+its hinges, it stood ever open and probably would not shut. Thus at
+night the Jago doorways were a row of black holes, foul and forbidding.
+
+Dicky Perrott entered his hole with caution, for anywhere, in the
+passage and on the stairs, somebody might be lying drunk, against whom
+it would be unsafe to stumble. He found nobody, however, and climbed and
+reckoned his way up the first stair-flight with the necessary regard
+for the treads that one might step through and the rails that had gone
+from the side. Then he pushed open the door of the first-floor back and
+was at home.
+
+A little heap of guttering grease, not long ago a candle end, stood and
+spread on the mantel-piece, and gave irregular light from its drooping
+wick. A thin-railed iron bedstead, bent and staggering, stood against a
+wall, and on its murky coverings a half-dressed woman sat and neglected
+a baby that lay by her, grieving and wheezing. The woman had a long
+dolorous face, empty of expression and weak of mouth.
+
+'Where 'a' you bin, Dicky?' she asked, rather complaining than asking.
+'It's sich low hours for a boy.'
+
+Dicky glanced about the room. 'Got anythink to eat?' he asked.
+
+'I dunno,' she answered listlessly. 'P'raps there's a bit o' bread in
+the cupboard. I don't want nothin', it's so 'ot. An' father ain't bin
+'ome since tea-time.'
+
+The boy rummaged and found a crust. Gnawing at this, he crossed to
+where the baby lay. ''Ullo, Looey,' he said, bending and patting the
+muddy cheek. ''Ullo!'
+
+The baby turned feebly on its back, and set up a thin wail. Its eyes
+were large and bright, its tiny face was piteously flea-bitten and
+strangely old. 'Wy, she's 'ungry, mother,' said Dicky Perrott, and took
+the little thing up.
+
+He sat on a small box, and rocked the baby on his knees, feeding it with
+morsels of chewed bread. The mother, dolefully inert, looked on and
+said: 'She's that backward I'm quite wore out; more 'n ten months old,
+an' don't even crawl yut. It's a never-endin' trouble, is children.'
+
+She sighed, and presently stretched herself on the bed. The boy rose,
+and carrying his little sister with care, for she was dozing, essayed to
+look through the grimy window. The dull flush still spread overhead, but
+Jago Court lay darkling below, with scarce a sign of the ruinous back
+yards that edged it on this and the opposite sides, and nothing but
+blackness between.
+
+The boy returned to his box, and sat. Then he said: 'I don't s'pose
+father's 'avin' a sleep outside, eh?'
+
+The woman sat up with some show of energy. 'Wot?' she said sharply.
+'Sleep out in the street like them low Ranns an' Learys? I should 'ope
+not. It's bad enough livin' 'ere at all, an' me being used to different
+things once, an' all. You ain't seen 'im outside, 'ave ye?'
+
+'No, I ain't seen 'im: I jist looked in the court.' Then, after a pause:
+'I 'ope 'e's done a click,' the boy said.
+
+His mother winced. 'I dunno wot you mean, Dicky,' she said, but
+falteringly. 'You--you're gittin' that low an' an'--'
+
+'Wy, copped somethink, o' course. Nicked somethink. You know.'
+
+'If you say sich things as that I'll tell 'im wot you say, an' 'e'll pay
+you. We ain't that sort o' people, Dicky, you ought to know. I was alwis
+kep' respectable an' straight all my life, I'm sure, an'--'
+
+'I know. You said so before, to father--I 'eard: w'en 'e brought 'ome
+that there yuller prop--the necktie pin. Wy, where did 'e git that? 'E
+ain't 'ad a job for munse and munse: where's the yannups come from wot's
+bin for to pay the rent, an' git the toke, an' milk for Looey? Think I
+dunno? I ain't a kid. I know.'
+
+'Dicky, Dicky! you mustn't say sich things!' was all the mother could
+find to say, with tears in her slack eyes. 'It's wicked an'--an' low.
+An' you must alwis be respectable an' straight, Dicky, an'
+you'll--you'll git on then.'
+
+'Straight people's fools, _I_ reckon. Kiddo Cook says that, an' 'e's as
+wide as Broad Street. W'en I grow up I'm goin' to git toffs' clo'es an'
+be in the 'igh mob. They does big clicks.'
+
+'They git put in a dark prison for years an' years, Dicky--an'--an' if
+you're sich a wicked low boy, father 'll give you the strap--'ard,' the
+mother returned, with what earnestness she might. 'Gimme the baby, an'
+you go to bed, go on; 'fore father comes.'
+
+Dicky handed over the baby, whose wizen face was now relaxed in sleep,
+and slowly disencumbered himself of the ungainly jacket, staring at the
+wall in a brown study. 'It's the mugs wot git took,' he said, absently.
+'An' quoddin' ain't so bad.' Then, after a pause, he turned and added
+suddenly: 'S'pose father'll be smugged some day, eh, mother?'
+
+His mother made no reply, but bent languidly over the baby, with an
+indefinite pretence of settling it in a place on the bed. Soon Dicky
+himself, in the short and ragged shirt he had worn under the jacket,
+burrowed head first among the dingy coverings at the foot, and
+protruding his head at the further side, took his accustomed place
+crosswise at the extreme end.
+
+The filthy ceiling lit and darkened by fits as the candle-wick fell and
+guttered to its end. He heard his mother rise and find another fragment
+of candle to light by its expiring flame, but he lay still wakeful.
+After a time he asked: 'Mother, why don't you come to bed?'
+
+'Waitin' for father. Go to sleep.'
+
+He was silent for a little. But brain and eyes were wide awake, and soon
+he spoke again. 'Them noo 'uns in the front room,' he said. 'Ain't the
+man give 'is wife a 'idin' yut?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Nor yut the boy--'umpty-backed 'un?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'Seems they're mighty pertickler. Fancy theirselves too good for their
+neighbours; I 'eard Pigeony Poll say that; on'y Poll said--'
+
+'You mustn't never listen to Pigeony Poll, Dicky. Ain't you 'eard me say
+so? Go to sleep. 'Ere comes father.' There was, indeed, a step on the
+stairs, but it passed the landing, and went on to the top floor. Dicky
+lay awake, but silent, gazing upward and back through the dirty window
+just over his head. It was very hot, and he fidgeted uncomfortably,
+fearing to turn or toss lest the baby should wake and cry. There came a
+change in the hue of the sky, and he watched the patch within his view,
+until the red seemed to gather in spots, and fade a spot at a time. Then
+at last there was a tread on the stairs, that stayed at the door; and
+father had come home. Dicky lay still, and listened.
+
+'Lor, Josh, where ye bin?' Dicky heard his mother say. 'I'm almost wore
+out a-waitin'.'
+
+'Awright, awright'--this in a hoarse grunt, little above a whisper. 'Got
+any water up 'ere? Wash this 'ere stick.'
+
+There was a pause, wherein Dicky knew his mother looked about her in
+vacant doubt as to whether or not water was in the room. Then a quick,
+undertoned scream, and the stick rattled heavily on the floor. 'It's
+sticky!' his mother said. 'O my Gawd, Josh, look at that--an' bits o'
+'air, too!' The great shadow of an open hand shot up across the ceiling
+and fell again. 'O Josh! O my Gawd! You ain't, 'ave ye? Not--not--not
+that?'
+
+'Not wot? Gawblimy, not what? Shutcher mouth. If a man fights, you're
+got to fight back, ain' cher? Any one 'ud think it was a murder, to look
+at ye. I ain't sich a damn fool as that. 'Ere--pull up that board.'
+
+Dicky knew the loose floor-board that was lifted with a slight groaning
+jar. It was to the right of the hearth, and he had shammed sleep when it
+had been lifted once before. His mother whimpered and cried quietly.
+'You'll git in trouble, Josh,' she said. 'I wish you'd git a reg'lar
+job, Josh, like what you used--I do--I do.'
+
+The board was shut down again. Dicky Perrott through one opened eye saw
+the sky a pale grey above, and hoped the click had been a good one:
+hoped also that it might bring bullock's liver for dinner.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out in the Jago the pale dawn brought a cooler air and the chance of
+sleep. From the paving of Old Jago Street sad grey faces, open-mouthed,
+looked upward as from the Valley of Dry Bones. Down by Jago Row the
+coshed subject, with the blood dry on his face, felt the colder air, and
+moved a leg.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Three-quarters of a mile east of the Jago's outermost limit was the East
+End Elevation Mission and Pansophical Institute: such was the amazing
+success whereof, that a new wing had been built, and was now to be
+declared open by a Bishop of great eminence and industry.
+
+The triumphs of the East End Elevation Mission and Pansophical Institute
+were known and appreciated far from East London, by people who knew less
+of that part than of Asia Minor. Indeed, they were chiefly appreciated
+by these. There were kept, perpetually on tap for the aspiring East
+Ender, the Higher Life, the Greater Thought, and the Wider Humanity:
+with other radiant abstractions, mostly in the comparative degree,
+specifics all for the manufacture of the Superior Person. There were
+many Lectures given on still more subjects. Pictures were borrowed and
+shown, with revelations to the Uninformed of the morals ingeniously
+concealed by the painters. The Uninformed were also encouraged to debate
+and to produce papers on literary and political matters, while still
+unencumbered with the smallest knowledge thereof: for the Enlargement of
+the Understanding and the Embellishment of the Intellect. And there were
+classes, and clubs, and newspapers, and games of draughts, and musical
+evenings, and a brass band, whereby the life of the Hopeless Poor might
+be coloured, and the Misery of the Submerged alleviated. The wretches
+who crowded to these benefits were tradesmen's sons, small shop-keepers
+and their families, and neat clerks, with here and there a smart young
+artisan of one of the especially respectable trades. They freely
+patronised the clubs, the musical evenings, the brass band, and the
+bagatelle board; and those who took themselves seriously debated and
+Mutually-Improved with pomp. Others, subject to savage fits of
+wanting-to-know, made short rushes at random evening classes, with
+intervals of disgusted apathy. Altogether, a number of decently-dressed
+and mannerly young men passed many evenings at the Pansophical Institute
+in harmless pleasures, and often with an agreeable illusion of
+intellectual advance.
+
+Other young men, more fortunately circumstanced, with the educational
+varnish fresh and raw upon them, came from afar, equipped with a foreign
+mode of thought and a proper ignorance of the world and the proportions
+of things, as Missionaries. Not without some anxiety to their parents,
+they plunged into the perilous deeps of the East End, to struggle--for a
+fortnight--with its suffering and its brutishness. So they went among
+the tradesmen's sons and the shopmen, who endured them as they endured
+the nominal subscription; and they came away with a certain relief, and
+with some misgiving as to what impression they had made, and what they
+had done to make it. But it was with knowledge and authority that they
+went back among those who had doubted their personal safety in the dark
+region. The East End, they reported, was nothing like what it was said
+to be. You could see much worse places up West. The people were quite a
+decent sort, in their way: shocking Bounders, of course; but quite clean
+and quiet, and very comfortably dressed, with ties and collars and
+watches.
+
+But the Missionaries were few, and the subscribers to the Elevation
+Mission were many. Most had been convinced, by what they had been told,
+by what they had read in charity appeals, and perhaps by what they had
+seen in police-court and inquest reports, that the whole East End was a
+wilderness of slums: slums packed with starving human organisms without
+minds and without morals, preying on each other alive. These subscribers
+visited the Institute by twos and threes, on occasions of particular
+festivity among the neat clerks, and were astonished at the wonderful
+effects of Pansophic Elevation on the degraded classes, their aspect and
+their habits. Perhaps it was a concert where nobody was drunk: perhaps a
+little dance where nobody howled a chorus, nor wore his hat, nor punched
+his partner in the eye. It was a great marvel, whereunto the observers
+testified: so that more subscriptions came, and the new wing was built.
+
+The afternoon was bright, and all was promising. A small crowd of idlers
+hung about the main door of the Institute, and stared at a string of
+flags. Away to the left stood the new wing, a face of fair, clean brick;
+the ornamentation, of approved earnestness, in terra-cotta squares at
+regular intervals. Within sat many friends and relations of the shopmen
+and superior mechanics, and waited for the Bishop; the Eminences of the
+Elevation Mission sitting apart on the platform. Without, among the
+idlers, waited Dicky Perrott. His notions of what were going on were
+indistinct, but he had a belief, imbibed through rumour and tradition,
+that all celebrations at such large buildings were accompanied by the
+consumption, in the innermost recesses, of cake and tea. Even to be near
+cake was something. In Shoreditch High Street was a shop where cake
+stood in the window in great slabs, one slab over another, to an
+incalculable value. At this window--against it, as near as possible,
+his face flattened white--Dicky would stand till the shop-keeper drove
+him off: till he had but to shut his eyes to see once more, in the
+shifting black, the rich yellow sections with their myriad raisins. Once
+a careless errand-boy, who had bought a slice, took so clumsy a bite as
+he emerged that near a third of the whole piece broke and fell; and this
+Dicky had snatched from the paving and bolted with, ere the owner quite
+saw his loss. This was a superior sort of cake, at a penny. But once he
+had managed to buy himself a slice of an inferior sort for a halfpenny,
+in Meakin Street.
+
+Dicky Perrott, these blessed memories in his brain, stood unobtrusively
+near the door, with the big jacket buttoned over as decently as might
+be, full of a desperate design: which was to get inside by whatsoever
+manner of trick or opportunity he might, and so, if it were humanly
+possible, to the cake.
+
+The tickets were being taken at the door by an ardent young
+Elevator--one of the missionaries. Him, and all such washed and
+well-dressed people, Dicky had learnt to hold in serene contempt when
+the business in hand was dodging. There was no hurry: the Elevator might
+waste his vigilance on the ticket-holders for some time yet. And Dicky
+knew better than to betray the smallest sign of a desire for entrance
+while his enemy's attention was awake.
+
+Carriages drew up, and yielded more Eminences: toward the end the Bishop
+himself, whom Dicky observed but as a pleasant-looking old gentleman in
+uncommon clothes; and on whom he bestowed no more thought than a passing
+wonder at what might be the accident to his hat which had necessitated
+its repair with string.
+
+But at the spikes of the Bishop's carriage came another; and out of that
+there got three ladies, friends of the ticket-receiver, on whom they
+closed, greeting and shaking hands; and in a flash Dicky Perrott was
+beyond the lobby and moving obscurely along the walls of the inner hall,
+behind pillars and in shadow, seeking cake.
+
+The Choral Society sang their lustiest, and there were speeches.
+Eminences expressed their surprise and delight at finding the people of
+the East End, gathered in the Institute building, so respectable and
+clean, thanks to persistent, indefatigable, unselfish Elevation.
+
+The good Bishop, amid clapping of hands and fluttering of handkerchiefs,
+piped cherubically of everything. He rejoiced to see that day, whereon
+the helping hand of the West was so unmistakably made apparent in the
+East. He rejoiced also to find himself in the midst of so admirably
+typical an assemblage--so representative, if he might say so, of that
+great East End of London, thirsting and crying out for--for Elevation:
+for that--ah--Elevation which the more fortunately circumstanced
+denizens of--of other places, had so munificently--laid on. The people
+of the East End had been sadly misrepresented--in popular periodicals
+and in--in other ways. The East End, he was convinced, was not so black
+as it was painted. (Applause.) He had but to look about him. _Etcetera,
+etcetera._ He questioned whether so well-conducted, morally-given, and
+respectable a gathering could be brought together in any West End parish
+with which he was acquainted. It was his most pleasant duty on this
+occasion--and so on and so forth.
+
+Dicky Perrott had found the cake. It was in a much smaller room at the
+back of the hall, wherein it was expected that the Bishop and certain
+Eminences of the platform would refresh themselves with tea after the
+ceremony. There were heavy, drooping curtains at the door of this room,
+and deep from the largest folds the ratling from the Jago watched. The
+table was guarded by a sour-faced man--just such a man as drove him from
+the window of the cake shop in Shoreditch High Street. Nobody else was
+there yet, and plainly the sour-faced man must be absent or busy ere the
+cake could be got at.
+
+There was a burst of applause in the hall: the new wing had been
+declared open. Then there was more singing, and after that much
+shuffling and tramping, for everybody was free to survey the new rooms
+on the way out; and the Importances from the platform came to find the
+tea.
+
+Filling the room and standing about in little groups; chatting,
+munching, and sipping, while the sour-faced man distractedly floundered
+amid crockery: not a soul of them all perceived an inconsiderable small
+boy, ducking and dodging vaguely among legs and round skirts, making,
+from time to time, a silent snatch at a plate on the table: and
+presently he vanished altogether. Then the amiable Bishop, beaming over
+the tea-cup six inches from his chin, at two courtiers of the clergy,
+bethought him of a dinner engagement, and passed his hand downward over
+the rotundity of his waistcoat.
+
+'Dear, dear,' said the Bishop, glancing down suddenly, 'why--what's
+become of my watch?'
+
+There hung three inches of black ribbon, with a cut end. The Bishop
+looked blankly at the Elevators about him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three streets off, Dicky Perrott, with his shut fist deep in his
+breeches pocket, and a gold watch in the fist, ran full drive for the
+Old Jago.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+There was nobody in chase; but Dicky Perrott, excited by his novel
+exploit, ran hard: forgetting the lesson first learnt by every child of
+the Jago, to avoid, as far as may be, suspicious flight in open streets.
+He burst into the Old Jago from the Jago Row corner, by Meakin Street;
+and still he ran. A small boy a trifle bigger than himself made a sharp
+punch at him as he passed, but he took no heed. The hulking group at the
+corner of Old Jago Street, ever observant of weaklings with plunder, saw
+him, and one tried to catch his arm, but he had the wit to dodge. Past
+the Jago Court passage he scudded, in at the familiar doorway, and up
+the stairs. A pale hunchbacked child, clean and wistful, descended, and
+him Dicky flung aside and half downstairs with 'Git out, 'ump!'
+
+Josh Perrott sat on the bed, eating fried fish from an oily paper; for
+it was tea-time. He was a man of thirty-two, of middle height and
+stoutly built, with a hard, leathery face as of one much older. The hair
+about his mouth seemed always three days old--never much less nor much
+more. He was a plasterer--had, at least, so described himself at
+police-courts. But it was long since he had plastered, though he still
+walked abroad splashed and speckled, as though from an eruption of
+inherent plaster. In moments of pride he declared himself the only
+member of his family who had ever learned a trade, and worked at it. It
+was a long relinquished habit, but while it lasted he had married a
+decent boiler-maker's daughter, who had known nothing of the Jago till
+these latter days. One other boast Josh Perrott had: that nothing but
+shot or pointed steel could hurt him. And this, too, was near being a
+true boast; as he had proved in more than one fight in the local
+arena--which was Jago Court. Now he sat peaceably on the edge of the
+bed, and plucked with his fingers at the oily fish, while his wife
+grubbed hopelessly about the cupboard shelves for the screw of paper
+which was the sugar-basin.
+
+Dicky entered at a burst. 'Mother--father--look! I done a click! I got a
+clock--a red 'un!'
+
+Josh Perrott stopped, jaw and hand, with a pinch of fish poised in air.
+The woman turned, and her chin fell. 'O, Dicky, Dicky,' she cried, in
+real distress, 'you're a awful low, wicked boy. My Gawd, Josh, 'e--'e'll
+grow up bad: I said so.'
+
+Josh Perrott bolted the pinch of fish, and sucked his fingers as he
+sprang to the door. After a quick glance down the stairs he shut it, and
+turned to Dicky. 'Where d'je get that, ye young devel?' he asked, and
+snatched the watch.
+
+'Claimed it auf a ol' bloke w'en 'e was drinkin' 'is tea,' Dicky
+replied, with sparkling eyes. 'Let's 'ave a look at it, father.'
+
+'Did 'e run after ye?'
+
+'No--didn't know nuffin' about it. I cut 'is bit o' ribbin with my
+knife.' Dicky held up a treasured relic of blade and handle, found in a
+gutter. 'Ain' cher goin' to let's 'ave a look at it?'
+
+Josh Perrott looked doubtfully toward his wife: the children were
+chiefly her concern. Of her sentiments there could be no mistake. He
+slipped the watch into his own pocket, and caught Dicky by the collar.
+
+'I'll give you somethink, you dam young thief,' he exclaimed, slipping
+off his belt. 'You'd like to have us all in stir for a year or two, I
+s'pose; goin' thievin' watches like a growed-up man.' And he plied the
+belt savagely, while Dicky, amazed, breathless and choking, spun about
+him with piteous squeals, and the baby woke and puled in feeble
+sympathy.
+
+There was a rip, and the collar began to leave the old jacket. Feeling
+this, Josh Perrott released it, and with a quick drive of the fist in
+the neck sent Dicky staggering across the room. Dicky caught at the bed
+frame, and limped out to the landing, sobbing grievously in the bend of
+his sleeve.
+
+It was more than his mother had intended, but she knew better than to
+attempt interference. Now that he was gone, she said, with some
+hesitation: ''Adn't you better take it out at once, Josh?'
+
+'Yus, I'm goin',' Josh replied, turning the watch in his hand. 'It's a
+good 'un--a topper.'
+
+'You--you won't let Weech 'ave it, will ye, Josh? 'E--'e never gives
+much.'
+
+'No bloomin' fear. I'm goin' up 'Oxton with this 'ere.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dicky sobbed his way down the stairs and through the passage to the
+back. In the yard he looked for Tommy Rann, to sympathise. But Tommy was
+not, and Dicky paused in his grief to reflect that perhaps, indeed, in
+the light of calm reason, he would rather cast the story of the watch in
+a more heroic mould, for Tommy's benefit, than was compatible with tears
+and a belted back. So he turned and squeezed through a hole in the
+broken fence, sobbing again, in search of the friend that shared his
+inmost sorrows.
+
+The belting was bad--very bad. There was broken skin on his shins where
+the strap had curled round, and there was a little sticky blood under
+the shirt half way up his back: to say nothing of bruises. But it was
+the hopeless injustice of things that shook him to the soul. Wholly
+unaided, he had done, with neatness and credit, a click that anybody in
+the Jago would have been proud of. Overjoyed, he had hastened to receive
+the commendations of his father and mother, and to place the prize in
+their hands, freely and generously, though perhaps with some hope of hot
+supper by way of celebration. And his reward was this. Why? He could
+understand nothing: could but feel the wrong that broke his heart. And
+so, sobbing, he crawled through two fences to weep on the shaggy neck of
+Jerry Gullen's canary.
+
+Jerry Gullen's canary was no bird, but a donkey: employed by Jerry
+Gullen in his occasional intervals of sobriety to drag a cranky shallow,
+sometimes stored with glass bottles, rags, and hearth-stone: sometimes
+with firewood manufactured from a convenient hoarding, or from the
+joinery of an empty house: sometimes with empty sacks covering
+miscellaneous property suddenly acquired and not for general inspection.
+His vacations, many and long, Jerry Gullen's canary spent, forgotten and
+unfed, in Jerry Gullen's back-yard: gnawing desperately at fences, and
+harrowing the neighbourhood with his bray. Thus the nickname,
+facetiously applied by Kiddo Cook in celebration of his piteous song,
+grew into use; and 'Canary' would call the creature's attention as
+readily as a mouthful of imprecations.
+
+Jerry Gullen's canary was gnawing, gnawing, with a sound as of a crooked
+centre-bit. Everywhere about the foul yard, ten or twelve feet square,
+wood was rounded and splintered and bitten white, and as the donkey
+turned his heavy head, a drip of blood from his gums made a disc on the
+stones. A twitch of the ears welcomed Dicky, grief-stricken as he was;
+for it was commonly thus that he bethought him of solace in Jerry
+Gullen's back-yard. And so Dicky, his arms about the mangy neck, told
+the tale of his wrongs till consolation came in composition of the
+heroic narrative designed for Tommy Rann.
+
+'O, Canary, it is a blasted shame!'
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+When Dicky Perrott came running into Jago Row with the Bishop's watch in
+his pocket, another boy punched a fist at him, and at the time Dicky was
+at a loss to guess the cause--unless it were a simple caprice--but
+stayed neither to inquire nor to retaliate. The fact was that the Ranns
+and the Learys were coming out, fighting was in the air, and the small
+boy, meeting another a trifle smaller, punched on general principles.
+The Ranns and the Learys, ever at war or in guarded armistice, were the
+great rival families--the Montagues and the Capulets--of the old Jago.
+The Learys indeed, scarce pretended to rivalry--rather to factious
+opposition. For the Ranns gloried in the style and title of the 'Royal
+Family,' and dominated the Jago; but there were mighty fighters, men
+and women, among the Learys, and when a combat arose it was a hard one
+and an animated. The two families ramified throughout the Jago; and
+under the Rann standard, whether by kin or by custom, were the Gullens,
+the Fishers, the Spicers, and the Walshes; while in the Leary train came
+Dawsons, Greens, and Harnwells. So that near all the Jago was wont to be
+on one side or the other, and any of the Jago which was not, was apt to
+be the worse for it; for the Ranns drubbed all them that were not of
+their faction in the most thorough and most workmanlike manner, and the
+Learys held by the same practice; so that neutrality meant double
+drubbing. But when the Ranns and Learys combined, and the Old Jago
+issued forth in its entire might against Dove Lane, then the battle was
+one to go miles to see.
+
+This, however, was but a Rann and Leary fight; and it was but in its
+early stages when Dicky Perrott, emerging from Jerry Gullen's back-yard,
+made for Shoreditch High Street by way of the 'Posties'--the passage
+with posts at the end of Old Jago Street. His purpose was to snatch a
+handful of hay from some passing waggon, or of mixed fodder from some
+unguarded nosebag, wherewith to reward the sympathy of Jerry Gullen's
+canary. But by the 'Posties,' at the Edge Lane corner, Tommy Rann,
+capless, and with a purple bump on his forehead, came flying into his
+arms, breathless, exultant, a babbling braggart. He had fought Johnny
+Leary and Joe Dawson, he said, one after the other, and pretty nigh
+broke Johnny Leary's blasted neck; and Joe's Dawson's big brother was
+after him now with a bleed'n' shovel. So the two children ran on
+together, and sought the seclusion of their own back yard; where the
+story of Johnny Rann's prowess, with scowls and the pounding of
+imaginary foes, and the story of the Bishop's watch, with suppressions
+and improvements, mingled and contended in the thickening dusk. And
+Jerry Gullen's canary went forgotten and unrequited.
+
+That night fighting was sporadic and desultory in the Jago. Bob the
+Bender was reported to have a smashed nose, and Sam Cash had his head
+bandaged at the hospital. At the Bag of Nails in Edge Lane, Snob Spicer
+was knocked out of knowledge with a quart pot, and Cocko Harnwell's
+missis had a piece bitten off of one ear. As the night wore on, taunts
+and defiances were bandied from window to door, and from door to window,
+between those who intended to begin fighting to-morrow; and shouts from
+divers corners gave notice of isolated scuffles. Once a succession of
+piercing screams seemed to betoken that Sally Green had begun. There was
+a note in the screams of Sally Green's opposites which the Jago had
+learned to recognise. Sally Green, though of the weaker faction, was the
+female champion of the Old Jago: an eminence won and kept by fighting
+tactics peculiar to herself. For it was her way, reserving teeth and
+nails, to wrestle closely with her antagonist, throw her by a dexterous
+twist on her face, and fall on her, instantly seizing the victim's nape
+in her teeth, gnawing and worrying. The sufferer's screams were audible
+afar, and beyond their invariable eccentricity of quality--a quality a
+vaguely suggestive of dire surprise--they had mechanical persistence, a
+pump-like regularity, that distinguished them, in the accustomed ear,
+from other screams.
+
+Josh Perrott had not been home all the evening: probably the Bishop's
+watch was in course of transmutation into beer. Dicky, stiff and
+domestically inclined, nursed Looey and listened to the noises without
+till he fell asleep, in hopeful anticipation of the morrow. For Tommy
+Rann had promised him half of a broken iron railing wherewith to fight
+the Learys.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Sleep in the Jago was at best a thing of intermission, for
+reasons--reasons of multitude--already denoted; nevertheless Dicky slept
+well enough to be unconscious of his father's homecoming. In the
+morning, however, there lay Josh Perrott, snoring thunderously on the
+floor, piebald with road-dust. This was not a morning whereon father
+would want breakfast--that was plain: he would wake thirsty and savage.
+So Dicky made sure of a crust from the cupboard, and betook himself in
+search of Tommy Rann. As to washing, he was never especially fond of it,
+and in any case there were fifty excellent excuses for neglect. The only
+water was that from the little tap in the back yard. The little tap was
+usually out of order, or had been stolen bodily by a tenant; and if it
+were not, there was no basin there, nor any soap, nor towel; and
+anything savouring of moderate cleanliness was resented in the Jago as
+an assumption of superiority.
+
+Fighting began early, fast and furious. The Ranns got together soon, and
+hunted the Learys up and down, and attacked them in their houses: the
+Learys' chances only coming when straggling Ranns were cut off from the
+main body. The weapons in use, as was customary, rose in effectiveness
+by a swiftly ascending scale. The Learys, assailed with sticks, replied
+with sticks torn from old packing-cases, with protruding nails. The two
+sides bethought them of coshes simultaneously, and such as had no
+coshes--very few--had pokers and iron railings. Ginger Stagg, at bay in
+his passage, laid open Pud Palmer's cheek with a chisel; and, knives
+thus happily legitimised with the least possible preliminary form,
+everybody was free to lay hold of whatever came handy.
+
+In Old Jago Street, half way between Jago Court and Edge Lane, stood the
+Feathers, the grimiest and vilest of the four public-houses in the
+Jago. Into the Feathers some dozen Learys were driven, and for a while
+they held the inner bar and the tap-room against the Ranns, who swarmed
+after them, chairs, bottles, and pewter pots flying thick, while Mother
+Gapp, the landlady, hung hysterical on the beer-pulls in the bar,
+supplicating and blubbering aloud. Then a partition came down with a
+crash, bringing shelves and many glasses with it, and the Ranns rushed
+over the ruin, beating the Learys down, jumping on them, heaving them
+through the back windows. Having thus cleared the house of the intruding
+enemy, the Ranns demanded recompense of liquor, and took it, dragging
+handles off beer-engines, seizing bottles, breaking into the cellar, and
+driving in bungs. Nobody better than Mother Gapp could quell an ordinary
+bar riot--even to knocking a man down with a pot; but she knew better
+than to attempt interference now. Nothing could have made her swoon, but
+she sat limp and helpless, weeping and blaspheming.
+
+The Ranns cleared off, every man with a bottle or so, and scattered, and
+this for a while was their undoing. For the Learys rallied and hunted
+the Ranns in their turn: a crowd of eighty or a hundred sweeping the
+Jago from Honey Lane to Meakin Street. Then they swung back through Edge
+Lane to Old Jago Street, and made for Jerry Gullen's--a house full of
+Ranns. Jerry Gullen, Bill Rann, and the rest took refuge in the upper
+floors and barricaded the stairs. Below, the Learys broke windows and
+ravaged the rooms, smashing whatsoever of furniture was to be found.
+Above, Pip Walsh, who affected horticulture on his window-sill, hurled
+down flower-pots. On the stairs, Billy Leary, scaling the barricade, was
+flung from top to bottom, and had to be carried home. And then Pip
+Walsh's missis scattered the besiegers on the pavement below with a
+kettleful of boiling water.
+
+There was a sudden sortie of Ranns from Jago Court, but it profited
+nothing; for the party was small, and, its advent being unexpected,
+there was a lack of prompt co-operation from the house. The Learys held
+the field.
+
+Down the middle of Old Jago Street came Sally Green: red faced,
+stripped to the waist, dancing, hoarse and triumphant. Nail-scores wide
+as the finger striped her back, her face, and her throat, and she had a
+black eye; but in one great hand she dangled a long bunch of clotted
+hair, as she whooped defiance to the Jago. It was a trophy newly rent
+from the scalp of Norah Walsh, champion of the Rann womankind, who had
+crawled away to hide her blighted head, and be restored with gin. None
+answered Sally's challenge, and, staying but to fling a brickbat at Pip
+Walsh's window, she carried her dance and her trophy into Edge Lane.
+
+The scrimmage on Jerry Gullen's stairs was thundering anew, and parties
+of Learys were making for other houses in the street, when there came a
+volley of yells from Jago Row, heralding a scudding mob of Ranns. The
+defeated sortie-party from Jago Court, driven back, had gained New Jago
+Street by way of the house-passages behind the Court, and set to
+gathering the scattered faction. Now the Ranns came, drunk, semi-drunk,
+and otherwise, and the Learys, leaving Jerry Gullen's, rushed to meet
+them. There was a great shock, hats flew, sticks and heads made a wooden
+rattle, and instantly the two mobs were broken into an uproarious
+confusion of tangled groups, howling and grappling. Here a man crawled
+into a passage to nurse a broken head; there a knot gathered to kick a
+sprawling foe. So the fight thinned out and spread, resolving into many
+independent combats, with concerted rushes of less and less frequency,
+till once again all through the Jago each fought for his own hand. Kiddo
+Cook, always humorous, ran hilariously through the streets, brandishing
+a long roll of twisted paper, wherewith he smacked the heads of Learys
+all and sundry, who realised too late that the paper was twisted round a
+lodging-house poker.
+
+Now, of the few neutral Jagos: most lay low. Josh Perrott, however, hard
+as nails and respected for it, feared neither Rann nor Leary, and
+leaving a little money with his missis, carried his morning mouth in
+search of beer. Pigeony Poll, harlot and outcast, despised for that she
+neither fought nor kept a cosh-carrier, like a respectable married
+woman, slunk and trembled in corners and yards, and wept at the sight of
+bleeding heads. As for old Beveridge, the affair so grossly excited him
+that he neglected business (he cadged and wrote begging screeves) and
+stayed in the Jago, where he strode wildly about the streets, lank and
+rusty, stabbing the air with a carving knife, and incoherently defying
+'all the lot' to come near him. Nobody did.
+
+Dicky Perrott and Tommy Rann found a snug fastness in Jago Row. For
+there was a fence with a loose board, which, pushed aside, revealed a
+hole where-through a very small boy might squeeze; and within were
+stored many barrows and shallows, mostly broken, and of these one,
+tilted forward and bottom up, made a hut or den, screened about with
+fence and barrows. Here they hid while the Learys swept the Jago, and
+hence they issued from time to time to pound such youngsters of the
+other side as might come in sight. The bits of iron railing made
+imposing weapons, but were a trifle too big and heavy for rapid use in
+their puny hands. Still, Dicky managed to double up little Billy Leary
+with a timely lunge in the stomach, and Tommy Rann made Bobby Harnwell's
+nose bleed very satisfactorily. On the other hand, the bump on Tommy
+Rann's forehead was widened by the visitation of a stick, and Dicky
+Perrott sustained a very hopeful punch in the eye, which he cherished
+enthusiastically with a view to an honourable blackness. In the snuggery
+intervals they explained their prowess one to another, and Dicky alluded
+to his intention, when he was a man, to buy a very long sword wherewith
+to cut off the Learys' heads: Tommy Rann inclining, however, to a gun,
+with which one might also shoot birds.
+
+The battle flagged a little toward mid-day, but waxed lively again as
+the afternoon began. It was then that Dicky Perrott, venturing some way
+from the retreat, found himself in a scrimmage, and a man snatched away
+his piece of iron and floored a Leary with it. Gratifying as was the
+distinction of aiding in the exploit, Dicky mourned the loss of the
+weapon almost unto tears, and Tommy Rann would not go turn-about with
+the other, but kept it wholly for himself; so Dicky was fain to hunt
+sorrowfully for a mere stick. Even a disengaged stick was not easy to
+find just then. So Dicky, emerging from the Jago, tried Meakin Street,
+where there were shops, but unsuccessfully, and so came round by Luck
+Row, a narrow way from Meakin Street by Walker's cook shop, up through
+the Jago.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dicky's mother, left with the baby, fastened the door as well as she
+might, and trembled. Indeed she had reason. The time of Josh Perrott's
+return was a matter of doubt, but when he did come he would want
+something to eat; it was for that he had left the money. But Dicky was
+out, and there was nothing in the cupboard. From the window she saw
+divers fights in Jago Court; and a man lay for near two hours on the
+stones with a cut on his temple. As for herself, she was no favourite in
+the neighbourhood at any time. For one thing, her husband did not carry
+the cosh. Then she was an alien who had never entirely fallen into Jago
+ways; she had soon grown sluttish and dirty, but she was never drunk,
+she never quarrelled, she did not gossip freely. Also her husband beat
+her but rarely, and then not with a chair nor a poker. Justly irritated
+by such superiorities as these, the women of the Jago were ill-disposed
+to brook another: which was, that Hannah Perrott had been married in
+church. For these reasons she was timid at the most peaceful of times,
+but now, with Ranns and Learys on the war-path, and herself obnoxious to
+both, she trembled. She wished Dicky would come and do her errand. But
+there was no sign of him, and mid-day wore into afternoon. It was late
+for Josh as it was, and he would be sure to come home irritable: it was
+his way when a bad head from overnight struggled with morning beer. If
+he found nothing to eat there would be trouble.
+
+At length she resolved to go herself. There was a lull in the outer din,
+and what there was seemed to come from the farther parts of Honey Lane
+and Jago Row. She would slip across by Luck Row to Meakin Street and be
+back in five minutes. She took up little Looey and went.
+
+And as Dicky, stickless, turned into Luck Row, there arose a loud shriek
+and then another, and then in a changed voice a succession of long
+screams with a regular breath-pause. Sally Green again! He ran, turned
+into Old Jago Street, and saw.
+
+Sprawled on her face in the foul road lay a writhing woman and screamed;
+while squeezed under her arm was a baby with mud in its eyes and a cut
+cheek, crying weakly; and spread over all, clutching her prey by hair
+and wrist, Sally Green hung on the nape like a terrier, jaws clenched,
+head shaking.
+
+Thus Dicky saw it in a flash, and in an instant he had flung himself on
+Sally Green, kicking, striking, biting and crying, for he had seen his
+mother and Looey. The kicks wasted themselves among the woman's
+petticoats, and the blows were feeble; but the sharp teeth were meeting
+in the shoulder-flesh, when help came.
+
+Norah Walsh, vanquished champion, now somewhat recovered, looked from a
+window, saw her enemy vulnerable, and ran out armed with a bottle. She
+stopped at the kerb to knock the bottom off the bottle, and then, with
+an exultant shout, seized Sally Green by the hair and stabbed her about
+the face with the jagged points. Blinded with blood, Sally released her
+hold on Mrs Perrott and rolled on her back, struggling fiercely; but to
+no end, for Norah Walsh, kneeling on her breast, stabbed and stabbed
+again, till pieces of the bottle broke away. Sally's yells and plunges
+ceased, and a man pulled Norah off. On him she turned, and he was fain
+to run, while certain Learys found a truck which might carry Sally to
+the hospital.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hannah Perrott was gone indoors, hysterical and helpless. She had scarce
+crossed the street on her errand when she had met Sally Green in quest
+of female Ranns. Mrs Perrott was not a Rann, but she was not a Leary, so
+it came to the same thing. Moreover, there was her general
+obnoxiousness. She had tried to run, but that was useless; and now,
+sobbing and bleeding, she was merely conscious of being gently led,
+almost carried, indoors and upstairs. She was laid back on the bed, and
+somebody loosened her hair and wiped her face and neck, giving her
+hoarse, comforting words. Then she saw the face--scared though coarse
+and pitted, and red about the eyes--that bent over her. It was Pigeony
+Poll's.
+
+Dicky had followed her in, no longer the hero of the Jago Row retreat,
+but with his face tearful and distorted, carrying the baby in his arms,
+and wiping the mud from her eyes. Now he sat on the little box and
+continued his ministrations, with fear in his looks as he glanced at his
+mother on the bed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Without, the fight rallied once more. The Learys ran to avenge Sally
+Green, and the Ranns met them with a will. Down by the Bag of Nails a
+party of Ranns was driven between the posts and through the gut into
+Shoreditch High Street, where a stand was made until Fag Dawson dropped,
+with a shoemaker's knife sticking under his arm-pit. Then the Ranns
+left, with most of the Learys after them, and Fag Dawson was carried to
+a chemist's by the police, never to floor a Rann again. For he was
+chived in the left lung.
+
+Thus the fight ended. For a faction fight in the Jago, with a few broken
+heads and ribs and an odd knife wound here and there--even with a death
+in the hospital from kicks or what not--was all very well; but when it
+came to homicide in the open High Street, the police drew the line, and
+entered the Jago in force. Ordinarily, a peep now and again from a
+couple of policemen between the 'Posties' was all the supervision the
+Jago had, although three policemen had been seen to walk the length of
+Old Jago Street together, and there were raids in force for special
+captures. There was a raid in force now, and the turmoil ceased. Nothing
+would have pleased both Ranns and Learys better than to knock over two
+or three policemen, for kicking-practice; but there were too many for
+the sport, and for hours they patrolled the Jago's closest passages. Of
+course nobody knew who chived Fag Dawson. No inquiring policeman ever
+found anybody in the Old Jago who knew anything, even to the harm of
+his bitterest foe. It was the sole commandment that ran there:--'Thou
+shalt not nark.'
+
+That night it was known that there would be a fight between Josh Perrott
+and Billy Leary, once the latter grew well. For Josh Perrott came home,
+saw his wife, and turned Rann on the spot. But for the police in the
+Jago that night, there would have been many a sore head, if no worse,
+among the Learys, by visitation of Josh Perrott. Sally Green's husband
+had fled years ago, and Billy Leary, her brother, was the obvious mark
+for Josh's vengeance. He was near as eminent a fighter among the men as
+his sister among the women, and a charming scrap was anticipated. It
+would come off, of course, in Jago Court one Sunday morning, as all
+fights of distinction did; and perhaps somebody in the High Mob would
+put up stakes.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+In the morning the police still held the Jago. Their presence
+embarrassed many, but none more than Dicky Perrott, who would always
+take a turning, or walk the other way, at sight of a policeman. Dicky
+got out of Old Jago Street early, and betook him to Meakin Street, where
+there were chandlers' shops with sugar in their windows, and cook-shops
+with pudding. He designed working through by these to Shoreditch High
+Street, there to crown his solace by contemplation of the cake-shop.
+But, as he neared Weech's coffee-shop, scarce half through Meakin
+Street, there stood Weech himself at the door, grinning and nodding
+affably, and beckoning him. He was a pleasant man, this Mr Aaron Weech,
+who sang hymns aloud in the back parlour, and hummed the tunes in the
+shop: a prosperous, white-aproned, whiskered, half-bald, smirking
+tradesman, who bent and spoke amiably to boys, looking sharply in their
+eyes, but talked to a man mostly with his gaze on the man's waistcoat.
+
+Indeed, there seemed to be something about Mr Aaron Weech especially
+attractive to youth. Nearly all his customers were boys and girls,
+though not boys and girls who looked likely to pay a great deal in the
+way of refreshment, much as they took. But he was ever indulgent, and at
+all times accessible to his young clients. Even on Sunday (though, of
+course, his shutters were kept rigidly up on the Day of Rest) a
+particular tap would bring him hot-foot to the door: not to sell coffee,
+for Mr Weech was no Sabbath-breaker.
+
+Now he stood at his door, and invited Dicky with nods and becks. Dicky,
+all wondering, and alert to dodge in case the thing were a mere device
+to bring him within striking distance, went.
+
+'W'y Dicky Perrott,' quoth Mr Weech in a tone of genial surprise, 'I
+b'lieve you could drink a cup o' cawfy!'
+
+Dicky, wondering how Mr Weech had learnt his name, believed he could.
+
+'An' eat a slice o' cake too, I'll be bound,' Mr Weech added.
+
+Dicky's glance leapt. Yes, he could eat a slice of cake too.
+
+'Ah, I knew it,' said Mr Weech, triumphantly; 'I can always tell.' He
+rubbed Dicky's cap about his head, and drew him into the shop, at this
+hour bare of customers. At the innermost compartment they stopped, and
+Mr Weech, with a gentle pressure on the shoulders, seated Dicky at the
+table.
+
+He brought the coffee, and not a single slice of cake, but two. True, it
+was not cake of Elevation Mission quality, nor was it so good as that
+shown at the shop in High Street: it was of a browner, dumpier, harder
+nature, and the currants were gritty and few. But cake it was, and to
+consider it critically were unworthy. Dicky bolted it with less comfort
+than he might, for Mr Weech watched him keenly across the table. And,
+indeed, from some queer cause, he felt an odd impulse to cry. It was
+the first time that he had ever been given anything, kindly and
+ungrudgingly.
+
+He swallowed the last crumb, washed it down with the dregs of his cup,
+and looked sheepishly across at Mr Weech.
+
+'Goes down awright, don't it?' that benefactor remarked. 'Ah, I like to
+see you enjoyin' of yerself. I'm very fond o' you young 'uns: 'specially
+clever 'uns like you.'
+
+Dicky had never been called clever before, so far as he could recollect,
+and he wondered at it now. Mr Weech, leaning back, contemplated him
+smilingly for some seconds, and then proceeded. 'Yus,' he said, 'you're
+the sort o' boy as can 'ave cawfy and cake w'enever you want it, you
+are.'
+
+Dicky wondered more, and his face said as much. 'You know,' Mr Weech
+pursued, winking again, grinning and nodding. 'That was a fine watch you
+found the other day. Y'ought to 'a' brought it to me.'
+
+Dicky was alarmed. How did Mr Weech learn about the watch? Perhaps he
+was a friend of the funny old man who lost it. Dicky half rose, but his
+affable patron leaned across and pushed him back on the seat. 'You
+needn't be frightened,' he said. 'I ain't goin' to say nothink to
+nobody. But I know all about it, mind, an' I could if I liked. You found
+the watch, an' it was a red 'un, on a bit o' ribbin. Well, then you went
+and took it 'ome, like a little fool. Wot does yer father do? W'y 'e ups
+an' lathers you with 'is belt, an' 'e keeps the watch 'isself. That's
+all you git for yer pains. See--I know all about it.' And Mr Weech gazed
+on Dicky Perrott with a fixed grin.
+
+''Oo toldjer?' Dicky managed to ask at last.
+
+'Ah!'--this with a great emphasis and a tapping of the forefinger beside
+the nose--'I don't want much tellin': it ain't much as goes on 'ereabout
+I don't know of. Never mind 'ow. P'raps I got a little bird as
+w'ispers--p'raps I do it some other way. Any'ow I know. It ain't no good
+any boy tryin' to do somethink unbeknownst to me, mindjer.'
+
+Mr Weech's head lay aside, his grin widened, his glance was sidelong,
+his forefinger pointed from his temple over Dicky's head, and
+altogether he looked so very knowing that Dicky shuffled in his seat. By
+what mysterious means was this new-found friend so well informed? The
+doubt troubled him, for Dicky knew nothing of Mr Aaron Weech's
+conversation, an hour before, with Tommy Rann.
+
+'But it's awright, bless yer,' Mr Weech went on presently. 'Nobody's
+none the wuss for me knowin' about 'em.... Well, we was a-talkin' about
+the watch, wasn't we? All you got after sich a lot o' trouble was a
+woppin' with a belt. That was too bad.' Mr Weech's voice was piteous and
+sympathetic. 'After you a-findin' sich a nice watch--a red 'un an'
+all!--you gits nothink for yerself but a beltin'. Never mind, you'll do
+better next time--I'll take care o' that. I don't like to see a clever
+boy put upon. You go an' find another, or somethink else--anythink
+good--an' then you bring it 'ere.'
+
+Mr Weech's friendly sympathy extinguished Dicky's doubt. 'I didn't find
+it,' he said, shy but proud. 'It was a click--I sneaked it.'
+
+'Eh?' ejaculated Mr Weech, a sudden picture of blank incomprehension.
+'Eh? What? Click? Wot's a click? Sneaked? Wot's that? I dunno nothink
+about no talk o' that sort, an' I don't want to. It's my belief it means
+somethink wrong--but I dunno, an' I don't want to. 'Ear that? Eh? Don't
+let me 'ave no more o' that, or you'd better not come near me agin. If
+you _find_ somethink, awright: you come to me an' I'll give ye somethink
+for it, if it's any good. It ain't no business of anybody's _where_ you
+find it, o' course, an' I don't want to know. But clicks and
+sneaks--them's Greek to me, an' I don't want to learn 'em. Unnerstand
+that? Nice talk to respectable people, with yer clicks an' sneaks!'
+
+Dicky blushed a little, and felt very guilty without in the least
+understanding the offence. But Mr Weech's virtuous indignation subsided
+as quickly as it had arisen, and he went on as amiably as ever.
+
+'When you _find_ anythink,' he said, 'jist like you found that watch,
+don't tell nobody, an' don't let nobody see it. Bring it 'ere quiet,
+when there ain't any p'liceman in the street, an' come right through to
+the back o' the shop, an' say, "I come to clean the knives." Unnerstand?
+"I come to clean the knives." There ain't no knives to clean--it's on'y
+a way o' tellin' me you got somethink without other people knowin'. An'
+then I'll give you somethink for it--money p'raps, or p'raps cake or wot
+not. Don't forgit. "I come to clean the knives." See?'
+
+Yes, Dicky understood perfectly; and Dicky saw a new world of dazzling
+delights. Cake--limitless cake, coffee, and the like whenever he might
+feel moved thereunto; but more than all, money--actual money. Good broad
+pennies, perhaps whole shillings--perhaps even more still: money to buy
+bullock's liver for dinner, or tripe, or what you fancied: saveloys,
+baked potatoes from the can on cold nights, a little cart to wheel Looey
+in, a boat from a toy-shop with sails!
+
+'There's no end o' things to be found all over the place, an' a sharp
+boy like you can find 'em every day. If you don't find 'em, someone
+else will; there's plenty on 'em about on the look-out, an' you got jist
+as much right as them. On'y mind!'--Mr Weech was suddenly stern and
+serious, and his forefinger was raised impressively--'you know you can't
+do anythink without I know, an' if you say a word--if you say a word,'
+his fist came on the table with a bang, 'somethink 'll happen to you.
+Somethink bad.'
+
+Mr Weech rose, and was pleasant again, though business-like. 'Now, you
+just go an' find somethink,' he said. 'Look sharp about it, an' don't go
+an' git in trouble. The cawfy's a penny, an' the cake's a penny--ought
+prop'ly to be twopence, but say a penny this time. That's twopence you
+owe me, an' you better bring somethink an' pay it off quick. So go
+along.'
+
+This was an unforeseen tag to the entertainment. For the first time in
+his life Dicky was in debt. It was a little disappointing to find the
+coffee and cake no gift after all: though, indeed, it now seemed foolish
+to have supposed they were; for in Dicky Perrott's world people did not
+give things away--that were the act of a fool. Thus Dicky, with his
+hands in his broken pockets, and thought in his small face, whereon
+still stood the muddy streaks of yesterday's tears, trudged out of Mr
+Aaron Weech's shop-door, and along Meakin Street.
+
+Now he was beginning the world seriously, and must face the fact. Truly
+the world had been serious enough for him hitherto, but that he knew
+not. Now he was of an age when most boys were thieving for themselves,
+and he owed money like a man. True it was, as Mr Weech had said, that
+everybody--the whole Jago--was on the look-out for himself. Plainly he
+must take his share, lest it fall to others. As to the old gentleman's
+watch, he had but been beforehand. Through foolish ingenuousness he had
+lost it, and his father had got it, who could so much more easily steal
+one for himself; for he was a strong man, and had but to knock over
+another man at any night-time. Nobody should hear of future clicks but
+Mr Weech. Each for himself? Come, he must open his eyes.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+There was no chance all along Meakin Street. The chandlers and the
+keepers of cook-shops knew their neighbourhood too well to leave
+articles unguarded. Soon Dicky reached Shoreditch High Street. There
+things were a little more favourable. There were shops, as he well
+remembered, where goods were sometimes exhibited at the doors and
+outside the windows; but to-day there seemed to be no chance of the
+sort. As for the people, he was too short to try pockets, and indeed the
+High Street rarely gave passage to a more unpromising lot. Moreover,
+from robbery from the person he knew he must abstain, except for such
+uncommon opportunities as that of the Bishop's watch, for some years
+yet.
+
+He hung about the doors and windows of shop after shop, hoping for a
+temporary absence of the shop-keeper, which might leave something
+snatchable. But he hoped in vain. From most shops he was driven away,
+for the Shoreditch trader is not slow to judge the purpose of a
+loitering boy. So he passed nearly two hours: when at last he saw his
+chance. It came in an advantageous part of High Street, not far from the
+'Posties,' though on the opposite side of the way. A nurse-girl had left
+a perambulator at a shop door, while she bought inside, and on the
+perambulator lay loose a little skin rug, from under which a little fat
+leg stuck and waved aloft. Dicky set his back to the shop, and sidled to
+within reach of the perambulator. But it chanced that at this moment the
+nurse-girl stepped to the door, and she made a snatch at his arm as he
+lifted the rug. This he dropped at once, and was swinging leisurely away
+(for he despised the chase of any nurse-girl) when a man took him
+suddenly by the shoulder. Quick as a weasel, Dicky ducked under the
+man's arm, pulled his shoulder clear, dropped forward and rested an
+instant on the tips of his fingers to avoid the catch of the other hand,
+and shot out into the road. The man tried to follow, but Dicky ran under
+the belly of a standing horse, under the head of another that trotted,
+across the fore-platform of a tramcar--behind the driver's back--and so
+over to the 'Posties.'
+
+He slouched into the Jago, disappointed. As he crossed Edge Lane, he was
+surprised to perceive a stranger--a toff, indeed--who walked slowly
+along, looking up right and left at the grimy habitations about him. He
+wore a tall hat, and his clothes were black, and of a pattern that Dicky
+remembered to have seen at the Elevation Mission. They were, in fact,
+the clothes of a clergyman. For himself, he was tall and soundly built,
+with a certain square muscularity of face, and of age about thirty-five.
+He had ventured into the Jago because the police were in possession,
+Dicky thought; and wondered in what plight he would leave, had he come
+at another time. But losing view of the stranger, and making his way
+along Old Jago Street, Dicky perceived that indeed the police were
+gone, and that the Jago was free.
+
+He climbed the broken stairs and pushed into the first-floor back,
+hopeful, though more doubtful, of dinner. There was none. His mother,
+tied about the neck with rags, lay across the bed nursing the damage of
+yesterday, and commiserating herself. A yard from her lay Looey, sick
+and ailing in a new way, but disregarded. Dicky moved to lift her, but
+at that she cried the more, and he was fain to let her lie. She rolled
+her head from side to side, and raised her thin little hand vaguely
+toward it, with feverishly working fingers. Dicky felt her head and she
+screamed again. There was a lump at the side, a hard, sharp lump; got
+from the stones of the roadway yesterday. And there was a curious
+quality, a rather fearful quality, in the little wails: uneasily
+suggestive of the screams of Sally Green's victims.
+
+Father was out, prowling. There was nothing eatable in the cupboard, and
+there seemed nothing at home worth staying for. He took another look at
+Looey, but refrained from touching her, and went out.
+
+The opposite door on the landing was wide open, and he could hear nobody
+in the room. He had never seen this door open before, and now he
+ventured on a peep: for the tenants of the front room were strangers,
+late arrivals, and interlopers. Their name was Roper. Roper was a pale
+cabinet-maker, fallen on evil times and out of work. He had a pale wife,
+disliked because of her neatly-kept clothes, her exceeding use of soap
+and water, her aloofness from gossip. She had a deadly pale baby; also
+there was a pale hunchbacked boy of near Dicky's age. Collectively the
+Ropers were disliked as strangers: because they furnished their own
+room, and in an obnoxiously complete style; because Roper did not drink,
+nor brawl, nor beat his wife, nor do anything all day but look for work;
+because all these things were a matter of scandalous arrogance,
+impudently subversive of Jago custom and precedent. Mrs Perrott was bad
+enough, but such people as these!...
+
+Dicky had never before seen quite such a room as this. Everything was so
+clean: the floor, the windows, the bed-clothes. Also there was a strip
+of old carpet on the floor. There were two perfectly sound chairs; and
+two pink glass vases on the mantel-piece; and a clock. Nobody was in the
+room, and Dicky took a step farther. The clock attracted him again. It
+was a small, cheap, nickel-plated, cylindrical thing, of American make,
+and it reminded him at once of the Bishop's watch. It was not gold,
+certainly, but it was a good deal bigger, and it could go--it was going.
+Dicky stepped back and glanced at the landing. Then he darted into the
+room, whipped the clock under the breast of the big jacket, and went for
+the stairs.
+
+Half way down he met the pale hunchback ascending. Left at home alone,
+he had been standing in the front doorway. He saw Dicky's haste, saw
+also the suspicious bulge under his jacket, and straightway seized
+Dicky's arm. 'Where 'a' you bin?' he asked sharply. 'Bin in our room?
+What you got there?'
+
+'Nothin' o' yours, 'ump. Git out o' that!' Dicky pushed him aside. 'If
+you don't le' go I'll corpse ye!'
+
+But one arm and hand was occupied with the bulge, and the other was for
+the moment unequal to the work of driving off the assailant. The two
+children wrangled and struggled downstairs, through the doorway and into
+the street: the hunchback weak, but infuriate, buffeting, biting and
+whimpering; Dicky infuriate too, but alert for a chance to break away
+and run. So they scrambled together across the street, Dicky dragging
+away from the house at every step; and just at the corner of Luck Row,
+getting his fore-arm across the other's face, he back-heeled him, and
+the little hunchback fell heavily, and lay breathless and sobbing, while
+Dicky scampered through Luck Row and round the corner into Meakin
+Street.
+
+Mr Weech was busier now, for there were customers. But Dicky and his
+bulge he saw ere they were well over the threshold.
+
+'Ah yus, Dicky,' he said, coming to meet him. 'I was expectin' you. Come
+in--
+
+    _In the swe-e-et by an' by,
+    We shall meet on that beautiful shaw-er!_
+
+Come in 'ere.' And still humming his hymn, he led Dicky into the shop
+parlour.
+
+Here Dicky produced the clock, which Mr Weech surveyed with no great
+approval. 'You'll 'ave to try an' do better than this, you know,' he
+said. 'But any'ow 'ere it is, sich as it is. It about clears auf wot you
+owe, I reckon. Want some dinner?'
+
+This was a fact, and Dicky admitted it.
+
+'Awright--
+
+    _In the swe-e-e-t by an' by_,--
+
+come out an' set down. I'll bring you somethink 'ot.'
+
+This proved to be a very salt bloater, a cup of the usual muddy coffee,
+tasting of burnt toast, and a bit of bread: afterwards supplemented by a
+slice of cake. This to Dicky was a banquet. Moreover, there was the
+adult dignity of taking your dinner in a coffee-shop, which Dicky
+supported indomitably now that he began to feel at ease in Mr Weech's:
+leaning back in his seat, swinging his feet, and looking about at the
+walls with the grocers' almanacks hanging thereto, and the Sunday School
+Anniversary bills of past date, gathered from afar to signalise the
+elevated morals of the establishment.
+
+'Done?' queried Mr Weech in his ear. 'Awright, don't 'ang about 'ere
+then. Bloater's a penny, bread a 'a'peny, cawfy a penny, cake a penny.
+You'll owe thrippence a'peny now.'
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+When Dicky Perrott and the small hunchback were hauling and struggling
+across the street, Old Fisher came down from the top-floor back, wherein
+he dwelt with his son Bob, Bob's wife and two sisters, and five
+children: an apartment in no way so clean as the united efforts of ten
+people might be expected to have made it. Old Fisher, on whose grimy
+face the wrinkles were deposits of mud, stopped at the open door on the
+first floor, and, as Dicky had done, he took a peep. Perplexed at the
+monstrous absence of dirt, and encouraged by the stillness, Old Fisher
+also ventured within. Nobody was in charge, and Old Fisher, mentally
+pricing the pink glass vases at threepence, made for a small chest in
+the corner of the room, and lifted the lid. Within lay many of Roper's
+tools, from among which he had that morning taken such as he might want
+on an emergent call to work, to carry as he tramped Curtain Road.
+Clearly these were the most valuable things in the place; and, slipping
+a few small articles into his pockets, Old Fisher took a good double
+handful of the larger, and tramped upstairs with them. Presently he
+returned with Bob's missis, and together they started with more. As they
+emerged, however, there on the landing stood the little hunchback,
+sobbing and smearing his face with his sleeve. At sight of this new
+pillage he burst into sharp wails, standing impotent on the landing, his
+streaming eyes following the man and woman ascending before him. Old
+Fisher, behind, stumped the stairs with a clumsy affectation of
+absent-mindedness; the woman, in front, looked down, merely indifferent.
+Scarce were they vanished above, however, when the little hunchback
+heard his father and mother on the lower stairs.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Dicky came moodily back from his dinner at Mr Weech's, plunged in
+mystified computation: starting with a debt of twopence, he had paid Mr
+Weech an excellent clock--a luxurious article in Dicky's eyes--had eaten
+a bloater, and had emerged from the transaction owing threepence
+halfpenny. Of what such a clock cost he had no notion, though he felt it
+must be some inconceivable sum. As Mr Weech put it, the adjustment of
+accounts would seem to be quite correct; but the broad fact that all had
+ended in increasing his debt by three half-pence, remained and perplexed
+him. He remembered having seen such clocks in a shop in Norton Folgate.
+To ask the price, in person, were but to be chased out of the shop; but
+they were probably ticketed, and perhaps he might ask some bystander to
+read the ticket. This brought the reflection that, after all, reading
+was a useful accomplishment on occasion: though a matter of too much
+time and trouble to be worth while. Dicky had never been to school; for
+the Elementary Education Act ran in the Jago no more than any other Act
+of Parliament. There was a Board School, truly, away out of the Jago
+bounds, by the corner of Honey Lane, where children might go free, and
+where some few Jago children did go now and again, when boots were to be
+given away, or when tickets were to be had, for tea, or soup, or the
+like. But most parents were of Josh Perrott's opinion: that school-going
+was a practice best never begun; for then the child was never heard of,
+and there was no chance of inquiries or such trouble. Not that any such
+inquiries were common in the Jago, or led to anything.
+
+Meantime Dicky, minded to know if his adventure had made any stir in the
+house, carried his way deviously toward home. Working through the parts
+beyond Jago Row, he fetched round into Honey Lane, so coming at New
+Jago Street from the farther side. Choosing one of the houses whose
+backs gave on Jago Court, he slipped through the passage, and so, by the
+back yard, crawled through the broken fence into the court. Left and
+right were the fronts of houses, four a side. Before him, to the right
+of the narrow archway leading to Old Jago Street, was the window of his
+own home. He gained the back yard quietly, and at the kitchen door met
+Tommy Rann.
+
+'Come on,' called Tommy. ''Ere's a barney! They're a-pitchin' into them
+noo 'uns--Roperses. Roperses sez Fisherses is sneaked their things. They
+_are_ a-gittin' of it!'
+
+From the stairs, indeed, came shouts and curses, bumps and sobs and
+cries. The first landing and half the stairs were full of people, men
+and women, Ranns and Learys together. When Ranns joined Learys it was an
+ill time for them they marched against; and never were they so ready and
+so anxious to combine as after a fight between themselves, were but some
+common object of attack available. Here it was. Here were these
+pestilent outsiders, the Ropers, assailing the reputation of the
+neighbourhood by complaining of being robbed. As though their mere
+presence in the Jago, with their furniture and their superiority, were
+not obnoxious enough: they must turn about and call their neighbours
+thieves! They had been tolerated too long already. They should now be
+given something for themselves, and have some of their exasperating
+respectability knocked off; and if, in the confusion, their portable
+articles of furniture and bed-clothing found their way into more
+deserving hands--why, serve them right.
+
+The requisite volleys of preliminary abuse having been discharged, more
+active operations began under cover of fresh volleys. Dicky, with Tommy
+Rann behind him, struggled up the stairs among legs and skirts, and saw
+that the Ropers, the man flushed, but the woman paler than ever, were
+striving to shut their door. Within, the hunchback and the baby cried,
+and without, those on the landing, skidding the door with their feet,
+pushed inward, and now began to strike and maul. Somebody seized the
+man's wrist, and Norah Walsh got the woman by the hair and dragged her
+head down. In a peep through the scuffle Dicky saw her face, ashen and
+sweat-beaded, in the jamb of the door, and saw Norah Walsh's red fist
+beat into it twice. Then somebody came striding up the stairs, and Dicky
+was pushed farther back. Over the shoulders of those about him, Dicky
+saw a tall hat, and then the head beneath it. It was the stranger he had
+seen in Edge Lane--the parson: active and resolute. Norah Walsh he took
+by the shoulder, and flung back among the others, and as he turned on
+him, the man who held Roper's wrist released it and backed off.
+
+'What is this?' demanded the new-comer, stern and hard of face. 'What is
+all this?' He bent his frown on one and another about him, and, as he
+did it, some shrank uneasily, and on the faces of others fell the blank
+lack of expression that was wont to meet police inquiries in the Jago.
+Dicky looked to see this man beaten down, kicked and stripped. But a
+well-dressed stranger was so new a thing in the Jago, this one had
+dropped among them so suddenly, and he had withal so bold a confidence,
+that the Jagos stood irresolute. A toff was not a person to be attacked
+without due consideration. After such a person there were apt to be
+inquiries, with money to back them, and vengeance sharp and certain: the
+thing, indeed, was commonly thought too risky. And this man, so
+unflinchingly confident, must needs have reason for it. He might have
+the police at instant call--they might be back in the Jago at the
+moment. And he flung them back, commanded them, cowed them with his
+hard, intelligent eyes, like a tamer among beasts.
+
+'Understand this, now,' he went on, with a sharp tap of his stick on the
+floor. 'This is a sort of thing I will _not_ tolerate in my parish--in
+this parish: nor in any other place where I may meet it. Go away, and
+try to be ashamed of yourselves--go. Go, all of you, I say, to your own
+homes: I shall come there and talk to you again soon. Go along, Sam
+Cash--you've a broken head already, I see. Take it away: I shall come
+and see you too.'
+
+Those on the stairs had melted away like punished school-children. Most
+of the others, after a moment of averted face and muttered justification
+one to another, were dragging their feet, each with a hang-dog pretence
+of sauntering airily off from some sight no longer interesting. Sam
+Cash, who had already seen the stranger in the street, and was thus
+perhaps a trifle less startled than the others at his advent, stood,
+however, with some assumption of virtuous impudence, till amazed by
+sudden address in his own name: whereat, clean discomfited, he
+ignominiously turned tail and sneaked downstairs in meaner case than the
+rest. How should this strange parson know him, and know his name?
+Plainly he must be connected with the police. He had brought out the
+name as pat as you please. So argued Sam Cash with his fellows in the
+outer street: never recalling that Jerry Gullen had called aloud to him
+by name, when first he observed the parson in the street; had called to
+him, indeed, to haste to the bashing of the Ropers; and thus had first
+given the stranger notice of the proceeding. But it was the way of the
+Jago that its mean cunning saw a mystery and a terror where simple
+intelligence saw there was none.
+
+As the crowd began to break up, Dicky pushed his own door a little open
+behind him, and there stood on his own ground, as the others cleared
+off; and the hunchback ventured a peep from behind his swooning mother.
+'There y'are, that's 'im!' he shouted, pointing at Dicky. ''E begun it!
+'E took the clock!' Dicky instantly dropped behind his door, and shut it
+fast.
+
+The invaders had all gone--the Fishers had made upstairs in the
+beginning--before the parson turned and entered the Ropers' room. In
+five minutes he emerged and strode upstairs: whence he returned, after a
+still shorter interval, herding before him Old Fisher and Bob Fisher's
+missis, sulky and reluctant, carrying tools.
+
+And thus it was that the Reverend Henry Sturt first addressed his
+parishioners. The parish, besides the Jago, comprised Meakin Street and
+some small way beyond, and it was to this less savage district that his
+predecessor had confined his attention: preaching every Sunday in a
+stable, in an alley behind a disused shop, and distributing loaves and
+sixpences to the old women who attended regularly on that account. For
+to go into the Jago were for him mere wasted effort. And so, indeed, the
+matter had been since the parish came into being.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+When Dicky retreated from the landing and shut the door behind him, he
+slipped the bolt, a strong one, put there by Josh Perrott himself,
+possibly as an accessory to escape by the window in some possible
+desperate pass. For a little he listened, but no sound hinted of attack
+from without, and he turned to his mother.
+
+Josh Perrott had been out since early morning, and Dicky, too, had done
+no more than look in for a moment in search of dinner. Hannah Perrott,
+grown tired of self commiseration, felt herself neglected and
+aggrieved--slighted in her state of invalid privilege. So she
+transferred some of her pity from her sore neck to her desolate
+condition as misprized wife and mother, and the better to feel it,
+proceeded to martyrise herself, with melancholy pleasure, by a
+nerveless show of 'setting to rights' in the room--a domestic novelty,
+perfunctory as it was. Looey, still restless and weeping, she left on
+the bed, for, being neglected herself, it was not her mood to tend the
+baby; she would aggravate the relish of her sorrows in her own way.
+Besides, Looey had been given something to eat a long time ago, and had
+not eaten it yet: with her there was nothing else to do. So that now, as
+she dragged a rag along the grease-strewn mantel-piece, Mrs Perrott
+greeted Dicky:--'There y'are, Dicky, comin' 'inderin' 'ere jest when I'm
+a-puttin' things to rights.' And she sighed with the weight of another
+grievance.
+
+Looey lay on her back, faintly and vainly struggling to turn her fearful
+little face from the light. Clutched in her little fist was the unclean
+stump of bread she had held for hours. Dicky plucked a soft piece and
+essayed to feed her with it, but the dry little mouth rejected the
+morsel, and the head turned feverishly from side to side to the sound of
+that novel cry. She was hot wherever Dicky touched her, and presently
+he said:--'Mother, I b'lieve Looey's queer. I think she wants some
+med'cine.'
+
+His mother shook her head peevishly. 'O, you an' Looey's a noosance,'
+she said. 'A lot you care about _me_ bein' queer, you an' yer father
+too, leavin' me all alone like this, an' me feelin' ready to drop, an'
+got the room to do an' all. I wish you'd go away an' stop 'inderin' of
+me like this.'
+
+Dicky took but another look at Looey, and then slouched out. The landing
+was clear, and the Ropers' door was shut. He wondered what had become of
+the stranger with the tall hat--whether he was in the Ropers' room or
+not. The thought hurried him, for he feared to have that stranger asking
+him questions about the clock. He got out into the street, thoughtful.
+He had some compunctions in the matter of that clock, now. Not that he
+could in any reasonable way blame himself. There the clock had stood at
+his mercy, and by all Jago custom and ethic it was his if only he could
+get clear away with it. This he had done, and he had no more concern in
+the business, strictly speaking. Nevertheless, since he had seen the
+woman's face in the jamb of the door, he felt a sort of pity for
+her--that she should have lost her clock. No doubt she had enjoyed its
+possession, as, indeed, he would have enjoyed it himself, had he not had
+to take it instantly to Mr Weech. And his fancy wandered off in
+meditation of what he would do with a clock of his own. To begin with,
+of course, he would open it, and discover the secret of its works and
+its ticking: perhaps thereby discovering how to make a clock himself.
+Also he would frequently wind it up, and he would show the inside to
+Looey, in confidence. It would stand on the mantel-piece, and raise the
+social position of the family. People would come respectfully to ask the
+time, and he would tell them, with an air. Yes, certainly a clock must
+stand eminent among the things he would buy, when he had plenty of
+money. He must look out for more clicks: the one way to riches.
+
+As to the Ropers, again. Bad it must be, indeed, to be deprived suddenly
+of a clock, after long experience of the joys it brought; and Norah
+Walsh had punched the woman in the face, and clawed her hair, and the
+woman could not fight. Dicky was sorry for her, and straightway resolved
+to give her another clock, or, if not a clock, something that would
+please her as much. He had acquired a clock in the morning; why not
+another in the afternoon? Failing a clock, he would try for something
+else, and the Ropers should have it. The resolve gave Dicky a virtuous
+exaltation of spirit, the reward of the philanthropist.
+
+Again he began the prowl after likely plunder that was to be his daily
+industry. Meakin Street he did not try. The chandlers' and the
+cook-shops held nothing that might be counted a consolatory equivalent
+for a clock. Through the 'Posties' he reached Shoreditch High Street at
+once, and started.
+
+This time his movements aroused less suspicion. In the morning he had no
+particular prize in view, and loitered at every shop, waiting his chance
+at anything portable. Now, with a more definite object, he made his
+promenade easily, but without stopping or lounging by shop-fronts. The
+thing, whatsoever it might be, must be small, handsome, and of an
+interesting character--at least as interesting as the clock was. It must
+be small, not merely for facility of concealment and removal--though
+these were main considerations--but because stealthy presentation were
+then the easier. It would have pleased Dicky to hand over his gift
+openly, and to bask in the thanks and the consideration it would
+procure. But he had been accused of stealing the clock, and an open gift
+would savour of admission and peace-offering, whereas in that matter
+stark denial was his plain course.
+
+A roll of print stuff would not do; apples would not do; and fish was
+wide of his purpose. Up one side and down the other side of High Street
+he walked, his eyes instant for suggestion and opportunity. But all in
+vain. Nobody exposed clocks out of doors, and of those within not one
+but an attempt on it were simple madness. And of the things less
+desperate of access nothing was proper to the occasion: all were too
+large, too cheap, or too uninteresting. Oddly, Dicky feared failure
+more than had he been hunting for himself.
+
+He tried farther south, in Norton Folgate. There was a shop of cheap
+second-hand miscellanies: saddles, razors, straps, dumbbells, pistols,
+boxing gloves, trunks, bags, and billiard-balls. Many of the things hung
+about the door-posts in bunches, and within all was black, as in a cave.
+At one door-post was a pistol. Nothing could be more interesting than a
+pistol--indeed it was altogether a better possession than a clock; and
+it was a small, handy sort of thing. Probably the Ropers would be
+delighted with a pistol. He stood and regarded it with much interest.
+There were difficulties. In the first place it was beyond his reach; and
+in the second, it hung by the trigger-guard on a stout cord. Just then,
+glancing within the shop, he perceived a pair of fiery eyes regarding
+him, panther-like, from the inner gloom; and he hastily resumed his
+walk, as the Jew shop-keeper reached the door, and watched him safely
+away.
+
+Now he came to Bishopsgate Street, and here at last he chose the gift.
+It was at a toy-shop: a fine, flaming toy-shop, with carts, dolls, and
+hoops dangling above, and wooden horses standing below, guarding two
+baskets by the door. One contained a mixed assortment of tops, whips,
+boats, and woolly dogs; the other was lavishly filled with shining,
+round metal boxes, nobly decorated with coloured pictures, each box with
+a little cranked handle. As he looked, a tune, delightfully tinkled on
+some instrument, was heard from within the shop. Dicky peeped. There was
+a lady, with a little girl at her side who was looking eagerly at just
+such a shining, round box in the saleswoman's hands, and it was from
+that box, as the saleswoman turned the handle, that the tune came. Dicky
+was enchanted. This--this was the thing, beyond debate: a pretty little
+box that would play music whenever you turned a handle. This was a thing
+worth any fifty clocks. Indeed it was almost as good as a regular
+barrel-organ, the first thing he would buy if he were rich.
+
+There was a shop-boy in charge of the goods outside the window, and his
+eyes were on Dicky. So Dicky whistled absently, and strolled carelessly
+along. He swung behind a large waggon, crossed the road, and sought a
+convenient doorstep; for his mind was made up, and his business was now
+to sit down before the toy-shop, and wait his opportunity.
+
+A shop had been boarded up after a fire, and from its doorstep one could
+command a perfect view of the toy-shop across the broad thoroughfare
+with its crowded traffic--could sit, moreover, safe from interference.
+Here he took his seat, secure from the notice of the guardian shop-boy,
+whose attention was given to passengers on his own side. The little
+girl, gripping the new toy in her hand, came out at her mother's side
+and trotted off. For a moment Dicky reflected that the box could be
+easily snatched. But after all the little girl had but one: whereas the
+shopwoman had many, and at best could play on no more than one at a
+time.
+
+He resumed his watch of the shop-boy, confident that sooner or later a
+chance would come. A woman stopped to ask the price of something, and
+Dicky had half crossed the road ere the boy had begun to answer. But the
+answer was short, and the boy's attention was released too soon.
+
+At last the shopwoman called the boy within, and Dicky darted
+across--not directly, but so as to arrive invisibly at the side next the
+basket of music boxes. A quick glance behind him, a snatch at the box
+with the reddest picture, and a dash into the traffic did it.
+
+The dash would not have been called for but for the sudden re-appearance
+of the shop-boy ere the box had vanished amid the intricacies of Dicky's
+jacket. Dicky was fast, but the boy was little slower, and was,
+moreover, bigger, and stronger on his legs; and Dicky reached the other
+pavement and turned the next corner into Widegate Street, the pursuer
+scarce ten yards behind.
+
+It was now that he first experienced 'hot beef'--which is the Jago idiom
+denoting the plight of one harried by the cry 'Stop thief.' Down
+Widegate Street, across Sandys Row and into Raven Row he ran his best,
+clutching the hem of his jacket and the music box that lay within.
+Crossing Sandys Row a loafing lad shouldered against the shop-boy, and
+Dicky was grateful, for he made it a gain of several yards.
+
+But others had joined in the hunt, and Dicky for the first time began to
+fear. This was a bad day--twice already he had been chased; and now--it
+was bad. He thought little more, for a stunning fear fell upon him: the
+fear of the hunted, that calculates nothing, and is measured by no
+apprehension of consequences. He remembered that he must avoid
+Spitalfields Market, full of men who would stop him; and he knew that in
+many places where a man would be befriended many would make a virtue of
+stopping a boy. To the right along Bell Lane he made an agonised burst
+of speed, and for a while he saw not nor remembered anything; heard no
+more than dreadful shouts drawing nearer his shoulders, felt only the
+fear. But he could not last. Quick enough when fresh, he was tiny and
+ill fed, and now he felt his legs trembling and his wind going.
+Something seemed to beat on the back of his head, till he wondered madly
+if it were the shop-boy with a stick. He turned corners, and chose his
+way by mere instinct, ashen-faced, staring, open-mouthed. How soon would
+he give in, and drop? A street more--half a street--ten yards? Rolling
+and tripping, he turned one last corner and almost fell against a vast,
+fat, unkempt woman whose clothes slid from her shoulders.
+
+''Ere y' are, boy,' said the woman, and flung him by the shoulder
+through the doorway before which she stood.
+
+He was saved at his extremity, for he could never have reached the
+street's end. The woman who had done it (probably she had boys of her
+own on the crook) filled the entrance with her frowsy bulk, and the
+chase straggled past. Dicky caught the stair-post for a moment's
+support, and then staggered out at the back of the house. He gasped, he
+panted, things danced blue before him, but still he clutched his jacket
+hem and the music box lying within. The back door gave on a
+cobble-paved court, with other doors, two coster's barrows, and a few
+dusty fowls. Dicky sat on a step where a door was shut, and rested his
+head against the frame.
+
+The beating in his head grew slower and lighter, and presently he could
+breathe with no fear of choking. He rose and moved off, still panting,
+and feeble in the legs. The court ended in an arched passage, through
+which he gained the street beyond. Here he had but to turn to the left,
+and he was in Brick Lane, and thence all was clear to the Old Jago.
+Regaining his breath and his confidence as he went, he bethought him of
+the Jago Row retreat, where he might examine his prize at leisure,
+embowered amid trucks and barrows. Thither he pushed his way, and soon,
+in the shade of the upturned barrow, he brought out the music box.
+Bright and shiny, it had taken no damage in the flight, though on his
+hands he found scratches, and on his shins bruises, got he knew not how.
+On the top of the box was the picture of a rosy little boy in crimson
+presenting a scarlet nosegay to a rosy little girl in pink, while a red
+brick mansion filled the distance and solidified the composition. The
+brilliant hoop that made the sides (silver, Dicky was convinced) was
+stamped in patterns, and the little brass handle was an irresistible
+temptation. Dicky climbed a truck, and looked about him, peeping from
+beside the loose fence-plank. Then, seeing nobody very near, he muffled
+the box as well as he could in his jacket, and turned the handle.
+
+This was indeed worth all the trouble. _Gently Does the Trick_ was the
+tune, and Dicky, with his head aside and his ear on the bunch of jacket
+that covered the box, listened: his lips parted, his eyes seeking
+illimitable space. He played the tune through, and played it again, and
+then growing reckless, played it with the box unmuffled, till he was
+startled by a bang on the fence from without. It was but a passing boy
+with a stick, but Dicky was sufficiently disturbed to abandon his
+quarters and take his music elsewhere.
+
+What he longed to do was to take it home and play it to Looey, but that
+was out of the question: he remembered the watch. But there was Jerry's
+Gullen's canary, and him Dicky sought and found. Canary blinked solemnly
+when the resplendent box was flashed in his eyes, and set his ears back
+and forward as, muffled again in Dicky's jacket, it tinkled out its
+tune.
+
+Tommy Rann should not see it, lest he prevail over its beneficent
+dedication to the Ropers. Truly, as it was, Dicky's resolution was hard
+to abide by. The thing acquired at such a cost of patience, address,
+hard flight, and deadly fear was surely his by right--as surely, quite,
+as the clock had been. And such a thing he might never touch again. But
+he put by the temptation manfully, and came out by Jerry Gullen's front
+door. He would look no more on the music box, beautiful as it was: he
+would convey it to the Ropers before temptation came again.
+
+It was not easy to devise likely means. Their door was shut fast, of
+course. For a little while he favoured the plan of setting the box
+against the threshold, knocking, and running off. But an opportunity
+might arise of doing the thing in a way to give him some glimpse of the
+Ropers' delight, an indulgence he felt entitled to. So he waited a
+little, listened a little, and at last came out into the street, and
+loafed.
+
+It was near six o'clock, and a smell of bloater hung about Jerry
+Gullen's door and window; under the raised sash Jerry Gullen,
+close-cropped and foxy of face, smoked his pipe, sprawled his elbows,
+and contemplated the world. Dicky, with the music box stowed out of
+sight, looked as blank of design and as destitute of possession as he
+could manage; for there were loafers near Mother Gapp's, loafers at the
+Luck Row corner--at every corner--and loafers by the 'Posties,' all
+laggard of limb and alert of eye. He had just seen a child, going with
+an empty beer can, thrown down, robbed of his coppers and a poor old
+top, and kicked away in helpless tears; and the incident was commonplace
+enough, or many would have lacked pocket-money. Whosoever was too young,
+too old, or too weak to fight for it must keep what he had well hidden,
+in the Jago.
+
+Down the street came Billy Leary, big, flushed and limping, and hanging
+to a smaller man by a fistful of his coat on the shoulder. Dicky knew
+the small man for a good toy-getter--(which = watch stealer)--and judged
+he had had a good click, the proceeds whereof Billy Leary was battening
+upon in beershops. For Billy Leary rarely condescended to anything less
+honourable than bashing, and had not yet fallen so low as to go about
+stealing for himself. His missis brought many to the cosh, and his chief
+necessity--another drink--he merely demanded of the nearest person with
+the money to buy it, on pain of bashing. Or he walked into the nearest
+public-house, selected the fullest pot, and spat in it: a ceremony that
+deprived the purchaser of further interest in the beer, and left it at
+his own disposal. There were others, both Ranns and Learys, who pursued
+a similar way of life; but Billy Leary was biggest among them--big men
+not being common in the Jago--and rarely came to a difficulty: as,
+however, he did once come, having invaded the pot of a stranger, who
+turned out to be a Mile End pugilist exploring Shoreditch. It was not
+well for any Jago who had made a click to have Billy Leary know of it;
+for then the clicker was apt to be sought out, clung to, and sucked dry;
+possibly bashed as well, when nothing more was left, if Billy Leary were
+still but sober enough for the work.
+
+Dicky gazed after the man with interest. It was he whom his father was
+to fight in a week or so--perhaps in a few days: on the first Sunday,
+indeed, that Leary should be deemed fit enough. How much of the limp was
+due to yesterday's disaster and how much to to-day's beer, Dicky could
+not judge. But there seemed little reason to look for a long delay
+before the fight.
+
+As Dicky turned away a man pushed a large truck round the corner from
+Edge Lane, and on the footpath beside it walked the parson, calm as
+ever, with black clothes and tall hat, whole and unsoiled. He had made
+himself known in the Jago in the course of that afternoon. He had
+traversed it from end to end, street by street and alley by alley. His
+self-possession, his readiness, his unbending firmness, abashed and
+perplexed the Jagos, and his appearance just as the police had left
+could but convince them that he must have some mysterious and potent
+connection with the force. He had attempted very little in the way of
+domiciliary visiting, being content for the time to see his parish, and
+speak here a word and there another with his parishioners. An encounter
+with Kiddo Cook did as much as anything toward securing him a proper
+deference. In his second walk through Old Jago Street, as he neared the
+Feathers, he was aware of a bunch of grinning faces pressed against the
+bar window, and as he came abreast, forth stepped Kiddo Cook from the
+door, impudently affable, smirking and ducking with mock obsequiousness,
+and offering a quart pot.
+
+'An' 'ow jer find jerself, sir?' he asked, with pantomime cordiality.
+'Hof'ly shockin' these 'ere lower classes, ain't they? Er--yus;
+disgustin', weally. Er--might I--er--prepose--er--a little refreshment?
+Ellow me.'
+
+The parson, grimly impassive, heard him through, took the pot, and
+instantly jerking it upward, shot the beer, a single splash, into
+Kiddo's face. 'There are things I must teach you, I see, my man,' he
+said, without moving a muscle, except to return the pot.
+
+Kiddo Cook, coughing, drenched and confounded, took the pot
+instinctively and backed to Mother Gapp's door, while the bunch of faces
+at the bar window tossed and rolled in a joyous ecstasy: the ghost
+whereof presently struggled painfully among Kiddo's own dripping
+features, as he realised the completeness of his defeat, and the
+expedience of a patient grin. The parson went calmly on.
+
+Before this, indeed when he left the Ropers' room, and just after Dicky
+had started out, he had looked in at the Perrotts' quarters to speak
+about the clock. But plainly no clock was there, and Mrs Perrott's
+flaccid indignation at the suggestion, and her unmistakable ignorance of
+the affair, decided him to carry the matter no further, at any rate for
+the present. Moreover, the little hunchback's tale was inconclusive. He
+had seen no clock in Dicky's possession--had but met him on the stairs
+with a bulging jacket. The thing might be suspicious, but the new parson
+knew better than to peril his influence by charging where he could not
+convict. So he duly commiserated Hannah Perrott's troubles, suggested
+that the baby seemed unwell and had better be taken to a doctor, and
+went his way about the Jago.
+
+Now he stopped the truck by Dicky's front door and mounted to the
+Ropers' room. For he had seen that the Jago was no place for them now,
+and had himself found them a suitable room away by Dove Lane. And so,
+emboldened by his company, the Ropers came forth, and with the help of
+the man who had brought the truck, carried down the pieces of their
+bedstead, a bundle of bedding, the two chairs, the pink vases, and the
+strip of old carpet, and piled them on the truck with the few more
+things that were theirs.
+
+Dicky, with his hand on the music box in the lining of his jacket,
+sauntered up by the tail of the truck, and, waiting his chance, plunged
+his gift under the bundle of bedding, and left it there. But the little
+hunchback's sharp eyes were jealously on him, and 'Look there!' he
+squealed, ''e put 'is 'and in the truck an' took somethink!'
+
+'Ye lie!' answered Dicky, indignant and hurt, but cautiously backing
+off; 'I ain't got nothink.' He spread his hands and opened his jacket in
+proof. 'Think I got yer bloomin' bedstead?'
+
+He had nothing, it was plain. In fact, at the tail of the truck there
+was nothing he could easily have moved at all, certainly nothing he
+could have concealed. So the rest of the little removal was hurried, for
+heads were now at windows, the loafers began to draw about the truck,
+and trouble might break out at any moment: indeed, the Ropers could
+never have ventured from their room but for the general uneasy awe of
+the parson. For nothing was so dangerous in the Jago as to impugn its
+honesty. To rob another was reasonable and legitimate, and to avoid
+being robbed, so far as might be, was natural and proper. But to accuse
+anybody of a theft was unsportsmanlike, a foul outrage, a shameful
+abuse, a thing unpardonable. You might rob a man, bash a man, even kill
+a man; but to 'take away his character'--even when he had none--was to
+draw down the execrations of the whole Jago; while to assail the pure
+fame of the place--to 'give the street a bad name'--this was to bring
+the Jago howling and bashing about your ears.
+
+The truck moved off at last, amid murmurings, mutterings, and grunts
+from the onlookers. The man of the truck pulled, Roper shoved behind,
+and his wife, with her threadbare decency and her meagre, bruised face,
+carried the baby, while the hunchbacked boy went by her side. All this
+under convoy of the Reverend Henry Sturt.
+
+A little distance gave more confidence to a few, and, when the group had
+reached within a score of yards of Edge Lane, there came a hoot or two,
+a 'Yah!' and other less spellable sounds, expressive of contempt and
+defiance. Roper glanced back nervously, but the rest held on their way
+regardless. Then came a brickbat, which missed the woman by very little
+and struck the truck wheel. At this the parson stopped and turned on his
+heel, and Cocko Harnwell, the flinger, drove his hands into his breeches
+pockets and affected an interest in Mother Gapp's window; till,
+perceiving the parson's eyes directed sternly upon him, and the parson's
+stick rising to point at him, he ingloriously turned tail and scuttled
+into Jago Court.
+
+And so the Ropers left the Jago. Dove Lane was but a stone's-throw ahead
+when some of the load shifted, and the truck was stopped to set the
+matter right. The chest was pushed back, and the bedding was lifted to
+put against it, and so the musical box came to light. Roper picked it up
+and held it before the vicar's eyes. 'Look at that, sir,' he said.
+'You'll witness I know nothing of it, won't you? It ain't mine, an' I
+never saw it before. It's bin put in for spite to put a theft on us.
+When they come for it you'll bear me out, sir, won't you? That was the
+Perrott boy as was put up to do that, I'll be bound. When he was behind
+the truck.'
+
+But nobody came for Dicky's gift, and in the Jago twilight Dicky vainly
+struggled to whistle the half-remembered tune, and to persuade himself
+that he was not sorry that the box was gone.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+Josh Perrott reached home late for tea but in good humour. He had spent
+most of the day at the Bag of Nails, dancing attendance on the High
+Mobsmen. Those of the High Mob were the flourishing practitioners in
+burglary, the mag, the mace, and the broads, with an outer fringe of
+such dippers--such pick-pockets--as could dress well, welshers, and
+snides-men. These, the grandees of rascality, lived in places far from
+the Jago, and some drove in gigs and pony traps. But they found the Bag
+of Nails a convenient and secluded exchange and house of call, and there
+they met, made appointments, designed villainies, and tossed for
+sovereigns: deeply reverenced by the admiring Jagos, among whom no
+ambition flourished but this--to become also of these resplendent ones.
+It was of these that old Beveridge had spoken one day to Dicky, in
+language the child but half understood. The old man sat on a curb in
+view of the Bag of Nails, and smoked a blackened bit of clay pipe. He
+hauled Dicky to his side, and, pointing with his pipe, said:--'See that
+man with the furs?'
+
+'What?' Dicky replied. 'Mean 'im in the ice-cream coat, smokin' a cigar?
+Yus.'
+
+'And the other with the brimmy tall hat, and the red face, and the
+umbrella?'
+
+'Yus.'
+
+'What are they?'
+
+''Igh mob. 'Ooks. Toffs.'
+
+'Right. Now, Dicky Perrott, you Jago whelp, look at them--look hard.
+Some day, if you're clever--cleverer than anyone in the Jago now--if
+you're only scoundrel enough, and brazen enough, and lucky enough--one
+of a thousand--maybe you'll be like them: bursting with high living,
+drunk when you like, red and pimply. There it is--that's your aim in
+life--there's your pattern. Learn to read and write, learn all you can,
+learn cunning, spare nobody and stop at nothing, and perhaps--' he
+waved his hand toward the Bag of Nails. 'It's the best the world has for
+you, for the Jago's got you, and that's the only way out, except gaol
+and the gallows. So do your devilmost, or God help you, Dicky
+Perrott--though he wont: for the Jago's got you!'
+
+Old Beveridge had eccentric talk and manners, and the Jago regarded him
+as a trifle 'balmy,' though anything but a fool. So that Dicky troubled
+little to sift the meaning of what he said.
+
+Josh Perrott's mission among the High Mob had been to discover some
+Mobsman who might be disposed to back him in the fight with Billy Leary.
+For though a private feud was the first cause of the turn-up, still
+business must never be neglected, and a feud or anything else that could
+produce money must be made to produce it, and when a fight of
+exceptional merit is placed before spectators, it is but fair that they
+should pay for their diversion.
+
+But few High Mobsmen were at the Bag of Nails that day. Sunday was the
+day of the chief gatherings of the High Mob: Sunday the market-day, so
+to speak, of the Jago, when such rent as was due weekly was paid (most
+of the Jago rents were paid daily and nightly) and other accounts were
+settled or fought out. Moreover, the High Mob were perhaps a trifle shy
+of the Jago at the time of a faction fight; and one was but just over,
+and that cut short at a third of the usual span of days. So that Josh
+waited long and touted vainly, till a patron arrived who knew him of
+old; who had employed him, indeed, as 'minder'--which means a protector
+or a bully, as you please to regard it--on a racecourse adventure
+involving bodily risk. On this occasion Josh had earned his wages with
+hard knocks given and taken, and his employer had conceived a high and
+thankful opinion of his capacity. Wherefore he listened now to the tale
+of the coming fight, and agreed to provide something in the way of
+stakes, and to put something on for Josh himself: looking for his own
+profit to the bets he might make at favourable odds with his friends.
+For Billy Leary was notorious as being near prime ruffian of the Jago,
+while Josh's reputation was neither so evil nor so wide. And so it was
+settled, and Josh came pleased to his tea; for assuredly Billy Leary
+would have no difficulty in finding another notable of the High Mob to
+cover the stakes.
+
+Dicky was at home, sitting by Looey on the bed; and when he called his
+father it seemed pretty plain to Josh that the baby was out of sorts.
+'She's rum about the eyes,' he said to his wife. 'Blimy if she don't
+look as though she was goin' to squint.'
+
+Josh was never particularly solicitous as to the children, but he saw
+that they were fed and clothed--perhaps by mere force of the habit of
+his more reputable days of plastering. He had brought home tripe, rolled
+in paper, and stuffed into his coat pocket, to make a supper on the
+strength of the day's stroke of business. When this tripe was boiled, he
+and Dicky essayed to drive morsels into Looey's mouth, and to wash them
+down with beer; but to no end but choking rejection. Whereat Josh
+decided that she must go to the dispensary in the morning. And in the
+morning he took her, with Dicky at his heels; for not only did his wife
+still nurse her neck, but in truth she feared to venture abroad.
+
+The dispensary was no charitable institution, but a shop so labelled in
+Meakin Street, one of half a dozen such kept by a medical man who lived
+away from them, and bothered himself as little about them as was
+consistent with banking the takings and signing the death-certificates.
+A needy young student, whose sole qualification was cheapness, was set
+to do the business of each place, and the uniform price for advice and
+medicine was sixpence. But there was a deal of professional character in
+the blackened and gilt lettered front windows, and the sixpences came by
+hundreds. For hospital letters but rarely came Meakin Street way. Such
+as did were mostly in the hands of tradesmen, who subscribed for the
+purpose of getting them, and gave them to their best customers, as was
+proper and business-like. And so the dispensary flourished, and the
+needy young student grew shifty and callous, and no doubt there were
+occasional faith-cures. Indeed, cures of simple science were not at all
+impossible. For there was always a good supply of two drugs in the
+place--Turkey rhubarb and sulphuric acid: both very useful, both very
+cheap, and both going very far in varied preparation, properly handled.
+An ounce or two of sulphuric acid, for instance, costing something
+fractional, dilutes with water into many gallons of physic. Excellent
+medicines they made too, and balanced each other very well by reason of
+their opposite effects. But indeed they were not all, for sometimes
+there were two or three other drugs in hand, interfering, perhaps
+troublesomely, with the simple division of therapeutics into the two
+provinces of rhubarb and sulphuric acid.
+
+Business was brisk at the dispensary: several were waiting, and medicine
+and advice were going at the rate of two minutes for sixpence. Looey's
+case was not so clear as most of the others: she could not describe its
+symptoms succinctly, as 'a pain here,' or 'a tight feeling there.' She
+did but lie heavily, staring blankly upward (she did not mind the light
+now), with the little cast in her eyes, and repeat her odd little wail;
+and Dicky and his father could tell very little. The young student had a
+passing thought that he might have known a trifle more of the matter if
+he had had time to turn up Ross on nerve and brain troubles--were such a
+proceeding consistent with the dignity of the dispensary; but
+straightway assigning the case to the rhubarb province, made up a
+powder, ordered Josh to keep the baby quiet, and pitched his sixpence
+among the others, well within the two minutes.
+
+And faith in the dispensary was strengthened, for indeed Looey seemed a
+little better after the powder; and she was fed with spoonfuls of a
+fluid bought at a chandler's shop, and called milk.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+'Dicky Perrott, come 'ere,' said Mr Aaron Weech in a voice of sad
+rebuke, a few days later. 'Come 'ere, Dicky Perrott.'
+
+He shook his head solemnly as he stooped. Dicky slouched up.
+
+'What was that you found the other day an' didn't bring to me?'
+
+'Nuffin'.' Dicky withdrew a step.
+
+'It's no good you a-tellin' me that, Dicky Perrott, when I know better.
+You know very well you can't pervent me knowin'.' His little eyes
+searched Dicky's face, and Dicky sulkily shifted his own gaze. 'You're a
+wicked, ungrateful young 'ound, an' I've a good mind to tell a p'liceman
+to find out where you got that clock. Come 'ere now--don't you try
+runnin' away. Wot! after me a-takin' you in when you was 'ungry, an'
+givin' you cawfy an' cake, an' good advice like a father, an' a bloater
+an' all, an' you owin' me thrippence a'peny besides, then you goes
+an'--an' takes yer findin's somewhere else!'
+
+'I never!' protested Dicky stoutly. But Mr Weech's cunning, equal to a
+shrewd guess that since his last visit Dicky had probably had another
+'find,' and quick to detect a lie, was slack to perceive a truth.
+
+'Now don't you go an' add on a wicked lie to yer sinful ungratefulness,
+wotever you do,' he said, severely. 'That's wuss, an' I alwis know.
+Doncher know the little 'ymn?--
+
+    An' 'im as does one fault at fust
+    An' lies to 'ide it, makes it two.
+
+It's bad enough to be ungrateful to me as is bin so kind to you, an'
+it's wuss to break the fust commandment. If the bloater don't inflooence
+you, the 'oly 'ymn ought. 'Ow would you like me to go an' ask yer father
+for that thrippence a'peny you owe me? That's wot I'll 'ave to do if you
+don't mind.'
+
+Dicky would not have liked it at all, as his frightened face testified.
+
+'Then find somethink an' pay it at once, an' then I won't. I won't be
+'ard on you, if you'll be a good boy. But don't git playin' no more
+tricks--'cos I'll know all about 'em. Now go an' find somethink quick.'
+And Dicky went.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Ten days after his first tour of the Old Jago, the Reverend Henry Sturt
+first preached in the parish church made of a stable, in an alley behind
+Meakin Street, but few yards away, though beyond sight and sound of the
+Jago. There, that Sunday morning was a morning of importance, a time of
+excitement, for the fight between Billy Leary and Josh Perrott was to
+come off in Jago Court. The assurance that there was money in the thing
+was a sovereign liniment for Billy Leary's bruises--for they were but
+bruises--and he hastened to come by that money, lest it melt by caprice
+of the backers, or the backers themselves fall at unlucky odds with the
+police. He made little of Josh Perrott, his hardness and known fighting
+power notwithstanding. For was there not full a stone and a half between
+their weights? and had Billy not four or five inches the better in
+height and a commensurate advantage in reach? And Billy Leary's own
+hardness and fighting power were well proved enough.
+
+It was past eleven o'clock. The weekly rents--for the week
+forthcoming--had been extracted, or partly extracted, or scuffled over.
+Old Poll Rann, who had made money in sixty-five years of stall-farming
+and iniquity, had made the rounds of the six houses she rented, to turn
+out the tenants of the night who were disposed to linger. Many had
+already stripped themselves to their rags at pitch-and-toss in Jago
+Court; and the game still went busily on in the crowded area and in
+overflow groups in Old Jago Street; and men found themselves deprived,
+not merely of the money for that day's food and that night's lodging,
+but even of the last few pence set by to back a horse for Tuesday's
+race. A little-regarded fight or two went on here and there as usual,
+and on kerbs and doorsteps sat women, hideous at all ages, filling the
+air with the rhetoric of the Jago.
+
+Presently down from Edge Lane and the 'Posties' came the High Mobsmen,
+swaggering in check suits and billycocks, gold chains and lumpy rings:
+stared at, envied, and here and there pointed out by name or exploit.
+'Him as done the sparks in from Regent Street for nine centuries o'
+quids'; 'Him as done five stretch for a snide bank bill an' they never
+found the oof'; 'Him as maced the bookies in France an' shot the nark in
+the boat'; and so forth. And the High Mob being come, the fight was due.
+
+Of course, a fight merely as a fight was no great matter of interest:
+the thing was too common. But there was money on this; and again, it was
+no common thing to find Billy Leary defied, still less to find him
+challenged. Moreover, the thing had a Rann and Leary complexion, and it
+arose out of the battle of less than a fortnight back. So that Josh
+Perrott did not lack for partisans, though not a Rann believed he could
+stand long before Billy Leary Billy's cause, too, had lost some
+popularity because it had been reported that Sally Green, in hospital,
+had talked of 'summonsing' Norah Walsh in the matter of her mangled
+face: a scandalous device to overreach, a piece of foul practice
+repugnant to all proper feeling; more especially for such a
+distinguished Jago as Sally Green--so well able to take care of herself.
+But all this was nothing as affecting the odds. They ruled at three to
+one on Billy Leary, with few takers, and went to four to one before the
+fight began.
+
+Josh Perrott had been strictly sober for a full week. And the family had
+lived better, for he had brought meat home each day. Now he sat
+indifferently at the window of his room, and looked out at the crowd in
+Jago Court till such time as he might be wanted. He had not been out of
+the room that morning: he was saving his energy for Billy Leary.
+
+As for Dicky, he had scarce slept for excitement. For days he had
+enjoyed consideration among his fellows on account of this fight. Now he
+shook and quivered, and nothing relieved his agitation but violent
+exertion. So he rushed downstairs a hundred times to see if the High Mob
+were coming, and back to report that they were not. At last he saw their
+overbearing checks, and tore upstairs, face before knees, with ''Ere
+they are, father! 'Ere they are! They're comin' down the street,
+father!' and danced frenzied about the room and the landing.
+
+Presently Jerry Gullen and Kiddo Cook came, as seconds, to take Josh
+out, and then Dicky quieted a little externally, though he was bursting
+at the chest and throat, and his chin jolted his teeth together
+uncontrollably. Josh dragged off his spotted coat and waistcoat and
+flung them on the bed, and then was helped out of his ill-mended blue
+shirt. He gave a hitch to his trousers-band, tightened his belt, and was
+ready.
+
+'Ta-ta, ol' gal,' he said to his wife, with a grin; 'back agin soon.'
+
+'With a bob or two for ye,' added Kiddo Cook, grinning likewise.
+
+Hannah Perrott sat pale and wistful, with the baby on her knees.
+Through the morning she had sat so, wretched and helpless,
+sometimes putting her face in her hands, sometimes breaking out
+hopelessly:--'Don't, Josh, don't--good Gawd, Josh, I wish you wouldn't!'
+or 'Josh, Josh, I wish I was dead!' Josh had fought before, it was true,
+and more than once, but then she had learned of the matter afterward.
+This preparation and long waiting were another thing. Once she had even
+exclaimed that she would go with him--though she meant nothing.
+
+Now, as Josh went out at the door, she bent over Looey and hid her face
+again. 'Good luck, father,' called Dicky, 'go it!' Though the words
+would hardly pass his throat, and he struggled to believe that he had no
+fear for his father.
+
+No sooner was the door shut than he rushed to the window, though Josh
+could not appear in Jago Court for three or four minutes yet. The
+sash-line was broken, and the window had been propped open with a stick.
+In his excitement Dicky dislodged the stick, and the sash came down on
+his head, but he scarce felt the blow, and readjusted the stick with
+trembling hands, regardless of the bruise rising under his hair.
+
+'Aincher goin' to look, mother?' he asked. 'Wontcher 'old up Looey?'
+
+But his mother would not look. As for Looey, she looked at nothing. She
+had been taken to the dispensary once again, and now lay drowsy and
+dull, with little more movement than a general shudder and a twitching
+of the face at long intervals. The little face itself was thinner and
+older than ever: horribly flea-bitten still, but bloodlessly pale. Mrs
+Perrott had begun to think Looey was ailing for something; thought it
+might be measles or whooping-cough coming, and complained that children
+were a continual worry.
+
+Dicky hung head and shoulders out of the window, clinging to the broken
+sill and scraping feverishly at the wall with his toes. Jago Court was
+fuller than ever. The tossing went on, though now with more haste, that
+most might be made of the remaining time. A scuffle still persisted in
+one corner. Some stood to gaze at the High Mob, who, to the number of
+eight or ten, stood in an exalted group over against the back fences of
+New Jago Street; but the thickest knot was about Cocko Harnwell's
+doorstep, whereon sat Billy Leary, his head just visible through the
+press about him, waiting to keep his appointment.
+
+Then a close group appeared at the archway, and pushed into the crowd,
+which made way at its touch, the disturbed tossers pocketing their
+coppers, but the others busily persisting, with no more than a glance
+aside between the spins. Josh Perrott's cropped head and bare shoulders
+marked the centre of the group, and as it came, another group moved out
+from Cocko Harnwell's doorstep, with Billy Leary's tall bulk shining
+pink and hairy in its midst.
+
+''E's in the court, mother,' called Dicky, scraping faster with his
+toes.
+
+The High Mobsmen moved up toward the middle of the court, and some from
+the two groups spread and pushed back the crowd. Still half a dozen
+couples, remote by the walls, tossed and tossed faster than ever, moving
+this way and that as the crowd pressed.
+
+Now there was an irregular space of bare cobble stones and house refuse,
+five or six yards across, in the middle of Jago Court, and all round it
+the shouting crowd was packed tight, those at the back standing on sills
+and hanging to fences. Every window was a clump of heads, and women
+yelled savagely or cheerily down and across. The two groups were merged
+in the press at each side of the space, Billy Leary and Josh Perrott in
+front of each, with his seconds.
+
+'Naa then, any more 'fore they begin?' bawled a High Mobsman, turning
+about among his fellows. 'Three to one on the big 'un--three to one!
+'Ere, I'll give fours--four to one on Leary! Fourer one! Fourer one!'
+
+But they shook their heads; they would wait a little. Leary and Perrott
+stepped out. The last of the tossers stuffed away his coppers, and
+sought for a hold on the fence.
+
+'They're a-sparrin', mother!' cried Dicky, pale and staring, elbows and
+legs a-work, till he was like to pitch out of window. From his mother
+there but jerked a whimpering sob, which he did not hear.
+
+The sparring was not long. There was little of subtlety in the milling
+of the Jago: mostly no more than a rough application of the main hits
+and guards, with much rushing and ruffianing. What there was of
+condition in the two men was Josh's: smaller and shorter, he had a
+certain hard brownness of hide that Leary, in his heavy opulence of
+flesh, lacked; and there was a horny quality in his face and hands that
+reminded the company of his boast of invulnerability to anything milder
+than steel. Also his breadth of chest was great. Nevertheless all odds
+seemed against him, by reason of Billy Leary's size, reach, and fighting
+record.
+
+The men rushed together, and Josh was forced back by weight. Leary's
+great fists, left and right, shot into his face with smacking reports,
+but left no mark on the leathery skin, and Josh, fighting for the body,
+drove his knuckles into the other's ribs with a force that jerked a
+thick grunt from Billy's lips at each blow.
+
+There was a roar of shouts. 'Go it, father! Fa--ther! Fa--ther!' Dicky
+screamed from the window, till his voice broke in his throat and he
+coughed himself livid. The men were at holds, and swaying this way and
+that over the uneven stones. Blood ran copiously from Billy Leary's nose
+over his mouth and chin, and, as they turned, Dicky saw his father spit
+away a tooth over Leary's shoulder. They clipped and hauled to and fro,
+each striving to break the other's foothold. Then Perrott stumbled at a
+hole, lost his feet, and went down, with Leary on top.
+
+Cheers and yells rent the air, as each man was taken to his own side by
+his seconds. Dicky let go the sill and turned to his mother, wild of
+eye, breathless with broken chatter.
+
+'Father 'it 'im on the nose, mother, like that--'is ribs is goin' black
+where father pasted 'em--'e was out o' breath fust--there' blood all
+over 'is face, mother--father would 'a' chucked 'im over if 'e 'adn't
+tumbled in a 'ole--father 'it 'im twice on the jore--'e--O!'
+
+Dicky was back again on the sill, kicking and shouting, for time was
+called, and the two men rushed again into a tangled knot. But the close
+strife was short. Josh had but closed to spoil his man's wind, and,
+leaving his head to take care of itself, stayed till he had driven left
+and right on the mark, and then got back. Leary came after him, gasping
+and blowing already, and Josh feinted a lead and avoided, bringing Leary
+round on his heel and off again in chase. Once more Josh met him, drove
+at his ribs, and got away out of reach. Leary's wind was going fast, and
+his partisans howled savagely at Josh--perceiving his tactics--taunting
+him with running away, daring him to stand and fight. 'I'll take that
+four to one,' called a High Mobsman to him who had offered the odds in
+the beginning. 'I'll stand a quid on Perrott!'
+
+'Not with me you won't,' the other answered. 'Evens, if you like.'
+
+'Right. Done at evens, a quid.'
+
+Perrott, stung at length by the shouts from Leary's corner, turned on
+Billy and met him at full dash. He was himself puffing by this, though
+much less than his adversary, and, at the cost of a heavy blow (which he
+took on his forehead), he visited Billy's ribs once more.
+
+Both men were grunting and gasping now, and the sound of blows was as of
+the confused beating of carpets. Dicky, who had been afflicted to
+heart-burst by his father's dodging and running, which he mistook for
+simple flight, now broke into excited speech once more:--
+
+'Father's 'it 'im on the jore ag'in--'is eye's a-bungin' up--_Go it,
+father, bash 'i-i-i-m!_ Father's landin' 'im--'e--'
+
+Hannah Perrott crept to the window and looked. She saw the foul Jago
+mob, swaying and bellowing about the shifting edge of an open patch, in
+the midst whereof her husband and Billy Leary, bruised, bloody and
+gasping, fought and battered infuriately; and she crept back to the bed
+and bent her face on Looey's unclean little frock; till a fit of tense
+shuddering took the child, and the mother looked up again.
+
+Without, the round ended. For a full minute the men took and gave knock
+for knock, and then Leary, wincing from another body-blow, swung his
+right desperately on Perrott's ear, and knocked him over.
+
+Exulting shouts rose from the Leary faction, and the blow struck Dicky's
+heart still. But Josh was up almost before Kiddo Cook reached him, and
+Dicky saw a wide grin on his face as he came to his corner. The leathery
+toughness of the man, and the advantage it gave him, now grew apparent.
+He had endured to the full as much and as hard punching as had his
+foe--even more, and harder; once he had fallen on the broken
+cobble-stones with all Leary's weight on him; and once he had been
+knocked down on them. But, except for the sweat that ran over his face
+and down his back, and for a missing front tooth and the lip it had cut,
+he showed little sign of the struggle; while Leary's left eye was a mere
+slit in a black wen, his nose was a beaten mass, which had ensanguined
+him (and indeed Josh) from crown to waist, and his chest and flanks were
+a mottle of bruises.
+
+'Father's awright, mother--I see 'im laughin'! And 'e's smashed Leary's
+nose all over 'is face!'
+
+Up again they sprang for the next round, Perrott active and daring,
+Leary cautious and a trifle stiff. Josh rushed in and struck at the
+tender ribs once more, took two blows callously on his head, and sent
+his left at the nose, with a smack as of a flail on water. With that
+Leary rushed like a bull, and Josh was driven and battered back, for the
+moment without response. But he ducked, and slipped away, and came
+again, fresh and vicious. And now it was seen that Perrott's toughness
+of hand was lasting. Leary's knuckles were raw, cut, and flayed, and
+took little good by the shock when they met the other's stubborn muzzle;
+while Josh still flung in his corneous fists, hard and lasting as a bag
+of bullets.
+
+But suddenly, stooping to reach the mark once more, Josh's foot turned
+on a projecting stone, and he floundered forward into Billy's arms.
+Like a flash his neck was clipped in the big man's left arm: Josh
+Perrott was in chancery. Quick and hard Leary pounded the imprisoned
+head, while Jerry Gullen and Kiddo Cook danced distracted and dismayed,
+and the crowd whooped and yelled.
+
+Dicky hung delirious over the sill, and shrieked he knew not what. He
+saw his father fighting hard at the back and ribs with both hands, and
+Leary hammering his face in a way to make pulp of an ordinary mazzard.
+Then suddenly Josh Perrott's right hand shot up from behind, over
+Leary's shoulder, and gripped him at the chin. Slowly, with tightened
+muscles, he forced his man back over his bent knee, Leary clinging and
+swaying, but impotent to struggle. Then, with an extra wrench from Josh,
+up came Leary's feet from the ground, higher, higher, till suddenly Josh
+flung him heavily over, heels up, and dropped on him with all his
+weight.
+
+The Ranns roared again. Josh was up in a moment, sitting on Kiddo Cook's
+knee, and taking a drink from a bottle. Billy Leary lay like a man
+fallen from a house-top. His seconds turned him on his back, and dragged
+him to his corner. There he lay limp and senseless, and there was a cut
+at the back of his head.
+
+The High Mobsman who held the watch waited for half a minute and then
+called 'Time!' Josh Perrott stood up, but Billy Leary was knocked out of
+knowledge, and heard not. He was beaten.
+
+Josh Perrott was involved in a howling, dancing crowd, and was pushed,
+grinning, this way and that, slapped on the back, and offered drinks. In
+the outskirts the tossers, inveterate, pulled out their pence and
+resumed their game.
+
+Dicky spun about, laughing, flushed, and elated, and as soon as the door
+was distinct to his dazzled sight, he ran off downstairs. His mother,
+relieved and even pleased, speculated as to what money the thing might
+bring. She put the baby on the bed, and looked from the window.
+
+Josh, in the crowd, shouted and beckoned her, pointing and tapping his
+bare shoulder. He wanted his clothes. She gathered together the shirt,
+the coat, and the waistcoat, and hurried downstairs. Looey could come to
+no harm lying on the bed for a few minutes. And, indeed, Hannah Perrott
+felt that she would be a person of distinction in the crowd, and was not
+sorry to have an excuse for going out.
+
+'Three cheers for the missis!' sang out Kiddo Cook as she came through
+the press. 'I said 'e'd 'ave a bob or two for you, didn't I?' Josh
+Perrott, indeed, was rich--a capitalist of five pounds. For a sovereign
+a side had been put up, and his backer had put on a sovereign for him at
+three to one. So that now it became him to stand beer to many
+sympathisers. Also, he felt that the missis should have some part in the
+celebration, for was it not her injury that he had avenged on Sally
+Green's brother? So Hannah Perrott, pleased though timorous, was hauled
+away with the rest to Mother Gapp's.
+
+Here she sat by Josh's side for an hour. Once or twice she thought of
+Looey, but with native inertness she let the thought slip. Perhaps
+Dicky would be back, and at any rate it was hard if she must not take
+half an hour's relaxation once in a way. At last came Dicky, urgent
+perplexity in his face, looking in at the door. Josh, minded to be
+generous all round, felt for a penny.
+
+'Mother,' said Dicky, plucking at her arm, 'Pigeony Poll's at 'ome,
+nussin' Looey; she told me to tell you to come at once.'
+
+Pigeony Poll? What right had she in the room? The ghost of Hannah
+Perrott's respectability rose in resentment. She supposed she must go.
+She arose, mystified, and went, with Dicky at her skirts.
+
+Pigeony Poll sat by the window with the baby in her arms, and pale
+misgiving in her dull face. 'I--I come in, Mrs Perrott, mum,' she said,
+with a hush in her thick voice, 'I come in 'cos I see you goin' out, an'
+I thought the baby'd be alone. She--she's 'ad a sort o' fit--all stiff
+an' blue in the face and grindin' 'er little mouth. She's left auf
+now--but I--I dunno what to make of 'er. She's so--so--'
+
+Hannah Perrott stared blankly, and lifted the child, whose arm dropped
+and hung. The wizen age had gone from Looey's face, and the lids were
+down on the strained eyes; her pale lips lay eased of the old
+pinching--even parted in a smile. For she looked in the face of the
+Angel that plays with the dead children.
+
+Hannah Perrott's chin fell. 'Lor',' she said bemusedly, and sat on the
+bed.
+
+An odd croaking noise broke in jerks from Pigeony Poll as she crept from
+the room, with her face bowed in the bend of her arm, like a weeping
+schoolboy. Dicky stared, confounded.... Josh came and gazed stupidly,
+with his mouth open, walking tip-toe. But at a word from Kiddo Cook, who
+came in his tracks, he snatched the little body and clattered off to the
+dispensary, to knock up the young student.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rumour went in the Jago that Josh Perrott was in double luck. For
+here was insurance money without a doubt. But in truth that was a thing
+the Perrotts had neglected.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hannah Perrott felt a listless relief; Josh felt nothing in particular,
+except that there was no other thing to be done, and that Mother Gapp's
+would be a cheerful place to finish the day in, and keep up the missis's
+pecker.
+
+So that eight o'clock that evening at Perrotts' witnessed a darkening
+room wherein an inconsiderable little corpse lay on a bed; while a small
+ragamuffin spread upon it with outstretched arms, exhausted with
+sobbing, a soak of muddy tears:--'O Looey, Looey! Can't you 'ear? Won't
+you never come to me no more?'
+
+And the Reverend Henry Sturt, walking from church through Luck Row
+toward his lodgings in Kingsland Road, heard shouts and riot behind the
+grimy panes of Mother Gapp's, and in the midst the roar of many voices
+joined in the Jago chant:--
+
+_Six bloomin' long months in a prison, Six more bloomin' months I must
+stay, For meetin' a bloke in our alley, An' takin' 'is uxter away!_
+
+_Toora-li--toora-li--looral, Toora-li--toora-li--lay, A-coshin' a bloke
+in our alley, An' takin' 'is uxter away!_
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+On an autumn day four years after his first coming to the Jago, the
+Reverend Henry Sturt left a solicitor's office in Cheapside, and walked
+eastward, with something more of hope and triumph in him than he had
+felt since the Jago fell to his charge. For the ground was bought
+whereon should be built a church and buildings accessory, and he felt,
+not that he was like to see any great result from his struggle, but that
+perhaps he might pursue it better armed and with less of grim despair
+than had been his portion hitherto.
+
+It had taken him four years to gather the money for the site, and some
+of it he was paying from his own pocket. He was unmarried, and had
+therefore no reason to save. Still, he must be careful, for the sake of
+the parish: the church must be built, and some of the money would
+probably be wanted for that. Moreover, there were other calls. The
+benefice brought a trifle less than L200 a year, and out of that, so far
+as it would go, he paid (with some small outside help) L130 for rent of
+the temporary church and the adjacent rooms; the organist's salary; the
+rates and the gas-bills; the cost of cleaning, care, and repair; the
+sums needed for such relief as was impossible to be withheld; and a
+thousand small things beside. While the Jagos speculated wildly among
+themselves as to the vast sums he must make by his job. For what toff
+would come and live in the Jago except for a consideration of solid
+gain? What other possible motive could there be, indeed?
+
+Still, he had an influence among them such as they had never known
+before. For one thing, they feared in him what they took for a sort of
+supernatural insight. The mean cunning of the Jago, subtle as it was,
+and baffling to most strangers, foundered miserably before his
+relentless intelligence; and crafty rogues--'wide as Broad Street,' as
+their proverb went--at first sulked, faltered and prevaricated
+transparently, but soon gave up all hope or effort to deceive him. Thus
+he was respected. Once he had made it plain that he was no common
+milch-cow in the matter of gratuities: to be bamboozled for shillings,
+cajoled for coals, and bullied for blankets: then there became apparent
+in him qualities of charity and lovingkindness, well-judged and
+governed, that awoke in places a regard that was in a way akin to
+affection. And the familiar habit of the Jago slowly grew to call him
+Father Sturt.
+
+Father Sturt was not to be overreached: that was the axiom gloomily
+accepted by all in the Jago who lived by what they accounted their wits.
+You could not juggle shillings and clothing (convertible into shillings)
+out of Father Sturt by the easy fee-faw-fum of repentance and salvation
+that served with so many. There were many of the Jagos (mightily
+despised by some of the sturdier ruffians) who sallied forth from time
+to time into neighbouring regions in pursuit of the profitable
+sentimentalist: discovering him--black-coated, earnest, green--sometimes
+a preacher, sometimes a layman, sometimes one having authority on the
+committee of a charitable institution; dabbling in the East End on his
+own account, or administering relief for a mission, or disbursing a
+Mansion House Fund. He was of two chief kinds: the Merely-Soft,--the
+'man of wool' as the Jago word went,--for whom any tale was good enough,
+delivered with the proper wistful misery: and the Gullible-Cocksure,
+confident in a blind experience, who was quite as easy to tap, when
+approached with a becoming circumspection. A rough and ready method,
+which served well in most cases with both sorts, was a profession of
+sudden religious awakening. For this, one offered an aspect either of
+serene happiness or of maniacal exaltation, according to the customer's
+taste. A better way, but one demanding greater subtlety, was the
+assumption of the part of Earnest Inquirer, hesitating on the brink of
+Salvation. For the attitude was capable of indefinite prolongation, and
+was ever productive of the boots, the coats, and the half-crowns used to
+coax weak brethren into the fold. But with Father Sturt, such trouble
+was worse than useless; it was, indeed, but to invite a humiliating
+snub. Thus, when Fluffy Pike first came to Father Sturt with the
+intelligence that he had at last found Grace, the Father Sturt asked if
+he had found it in a certain hamper--a hamper hooked that morning from a
+railway van--and if it were of a quality likely to inspire an act of
+restoration to the goods office. Nothing was to be done with a man of
+this disgustingly practical turn of mind, and the Jagos soon ceased from
+trying.
+
+Father Sturt had made more of the stable than the make-shift church he
+had found. He had organised a club in a stable adjoining, and he lived
+in the rooms over the shut-up shop. In the club he gathered the men of
+the Jago indiscriminately, with the sole condition of good behaviour on
+the premises. And there they smoked, jumped, swung on horizontal bars,
+boxed, played at cards and bagatelle, free from interference save when
+interference became necessary. For the women there were sewing-meetings
+and singing. And all governed with an invisible discipline, which, being
+brought to action, was found to be of iron.
+
+Now there was ground on which might be built a worthier church; and
+Father Sturt had in mind a church which should have by its side a
+cleanly lodging-house, a night-shelter, a club, baths and washhouses.
+And at a stroke he would establish this habitation and wipe out the
+blackest spot in the Jago. For the new site comprised the whole of Jago
+Court and the houses that masked it in Old Jago Street.
+
+This was a dream of the future--perhaps of the immediate future, if a
+certain new millionaire could only be interested in the undertaking--but
+of the future certainly. The money for the site alone had been hard
+enough to gather. In the first place the East London Elevation Mission
+and Pansophical Institute was asking very diligently for funds--and was
+getting them. It was to that, indeed, that people turned by habit when
+minded to invest in the amelioration of the East End. Then about this
+time there had arisen a sudden quacksalver, a Panjandrum of
+philanthropy, a mummer of the market-place, who undertook, for a fixed
+sum, to abolish poverty and sin together; and many, pleased with the new
+gaudery, poured out before him the money that had gone to maintain
+hospitals and to feed proved charities. So that gifts were scarce and
+hard to come by--indeed, were apt to be thought unnecessary, for was not
+misery to be destroyed out of hand? Moreover, Father Sturt wanted not
+for enemies among the Sentimental-Cocksure. He was callous and cynical
+in face of the succulent penitence of Fluffy Pike and his kind. He
+preferred the frank rogue before the calculating snivelmonger. He had a
+club at which boxing was allowed, and dominoes--flat ungodliness. He
+shook hands familiarly every day with the lowest characters: his tastes
+were vulgar and brutal. And the company at his club was really dreadful.
+These things the Cocksure said, with shaking of heads; and these they
+took care should be known among such as might give Father Sturt money.
+Father Sturt!--the name itself was sheer papistry. And many comforted
+themselves by writing him anonymous letters, displaying hell before his
+eyes, and dealing him vivid damnation.
+
+So Father Sturt tramped back to the Jago, and to the strain and struggle
+that ceased not for one moment of his life, though it left never a mark
+of success behind it. For the Jago was much as ever. Were the lump once
+leavened by the advent of any denizen a little less base than the rest,
+were a native once ridiculed and persuaded into a spell of work and
+clean living, then must Father Sturt hasten to drive him from the Jago
+ere its influence suck him under for ever; leaving for his own community
+none but the entirely vicious. And among these he spent his life:
+preaching little, in the common sense, for that were but idle vanity in
+this place; but working, alleviating, growing into the Jago life,
+flinging scorn and ridicule on evil things, grateful for tiny negative
+successes--for keeping a few from ill-behaviour but for an hour;
+conscious that wherever he was not, iniquity flourished unreproved; and
+oppressed by the remembrance that albeit the Jago death-rate ruled full
+four times that of all London beyond, still the Jago rats bred and bred
+their kind unhindered, multiplying apace and infecting the world.
+
+In Luck Row he came on Josh Perrott, making for home with something
+under the skirt of his coat 'How d'ye do, Josh?' said Father Sturt,
+clapping a hand on Josh's shoulder, and offering it as Josh turned
+about.
+
+Josh, with a shifting of the object under his coat, hastened to tap his
+cap-peak with his forefinger before shaking hands. He grinned broadly,
+and looked this way and that, with mingled gratification and
+embarrassment, as was the Jago way in such circumstances. Because one
+could never tell whether Father Sturt would exchange a mere friendly
+sentence or two, or, with concealed knowledge, put some disastrous
+question about a watch, or a purse, or a breast-pin, or what not.
+
+'Very well, thanks, Father,' answered Josh, and grinned amiably at the
+wall beyond the vicar's elbow.
+
+'And what have you been doing just lately?'
+
+'Oo--odd jobs, Father.' Always the same answer, all over the Jago.
+
+'Not quite such odd jobs as usual, I hope, Josh, eh?' Father Sturt
+smiled, and twitched Josh playfully by the button-hole as one might
+treat a child. 'I once heard of a very odd job in the Kingsland Road
+that got a fine young man six months' holiday. Eh, Josh?'
+
+Josh Perrott wriggled and grinned sheepishly; tried to frown, failed,
+and grinned again. He had only been out a few weeks from that six moon.
+Presently he said:--'Awright, Father; you do rub it into a bloke, no
+mistake.'
+
+The grin persisted as he looked first at the wall, then at the pavement,
+then down the street, but never in the parson's face.
+
+'Ah, there's a deal of good in a blister sometimes, isn't there, Josh?
+What's that I see--a clock? Not another odd job, eh?'
+
+It was indeed a small nickel-plated American clock which Josh had under
+his coat, and which he now partly uncovered with positive protests. 'No,
+s'elp me, Father, it's all straight--all fair trade, Father--jist a swop
+for somethink else, on me solemn davy. That's wot it is,
+Father--straight.'
+
+'Well, I'm glad you thought to get it, Josh,' Father Sturt pursued,
+still twitching the button-hole. 'You never have been a punctual
+churchgoer, you know, Josh, and I'm glad you've made arrangements to
+improve. You'll have no excuse now, you know, and I shall expect you on
+Sunday morning--promptly. Don't forget: I shall be looking for you.' And
+Father Sturt shook hands again, and passed on, leaving Josh Perrott
+still grinning dubiously, and striving to assimilate the invitation to
+church.
+
+The clock was indeed an exchange, though not altogether an innocent one:
+the facts being these. Early that morning Josh had found himself
+scrambling hastily along a turning out of Brick Lane, accompanied by a
+parcel of nine or ten pounds of tobacco, and extremely conscious of the
+hasty scrambling of several other people round the corner. Some of these
+people turned that corner before Josh reached the next, so that his
+course was observed, and it became politic to get rid of his parcel
+before a possible heading-off in Meakin Street. There was one place
+where this might be done, and that was at Weech's. A muddy yard, one of
+a tangle of such places behind Meakin Street, abutted on Weech's
+back-fence; and it was no uncommon thing for a Jago on the crook, hard
+pressed, to pitch his plunder over the fence, double out into the
+crowd, and call on Mr Aaron Weech for the purchase-money as soon as
+opportunity served. The manoeuvre was a simple one, facilitated by the
+plan of the courts; but it was only adopted in extreme cases, because Mr
+Aaron Weech was at best but a mean paymaster, and with so much of the
+upper hand in the bargain as these circumstances conferred, was apt to
+be meaner than ever. But this case seemed to call for the stratagem, and
+Josh made for the muddy yard, dropped the parcel over the fence, with a
+loud whistle, and backed off by the side passage in the regular way.
+
+When he called on Mr Aaron Weech a few hours later, that talented
+tradesman, with liberal gestures, told out shillings singly in his hand,
+pausing after each as though that were the last. But Josh held his hand
+persistently open, till Mr Weech, having released the fifth shilling,
+stopped altogether, scandalised at such rapacity. But still Josh was not
+satisfied, and as he was not quite so easy a customer to manage as the
+boys who commonly fenced at the shop, Mr Weech compromised, in the end,
+by throwing in a cheap clock. It had been in hand for a long time; and
+Josh was fain to take it, since he could get no more. And thus it was
+that Dicky, coming in at about five o'clock, was astonished to see on
+the mantel-piece, amid the greasy ruins of many candle ends, the clock
+that had belonged to the Ropers four years before.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+As for Dicky, he went to school. That is to say, he turned up now and
+again, at irregular intervals, at the Board School just over the Jago
+border in Honey Lane. When anything was given away, he attended as a
+matter of course; but he went now and again without such
+inducement--perhaps because he fancied an afternoon's change, perhaps
+because the weather was cold and the school was warm. He was classed as
+a half-timer, an arrangement which variegated the register, but
+otherwise did not matter. Other boys, half-timers or not, attended as
+little as he. It was long since the managers had realised the futility
+of attempting compulsion in the Jago.
+
+Dicky was no fool, and he had picked up some sort of reading and writing
+as he went along. Moreover, he had grown an expert thief, and had taken
+six strokes of a birch-rod by order of a magistrate. As yet he rarely
+attempted a pocket, being, for most opportunities, too small; but he was
+comforted by the reflection that probably he would never get really
+tall, and thus grow out of pocket-picking when he was fully experienced,
+as was the fate of some. For no tall man can be a successful pickpocket,
+because he must bend to his work, and so advertise it to every beholder.
+
+Meantime Dicky practised that petty larceny which is possible in every
+street in London; and at odd times he would play the scout among the
+practitioners of the 'fat's a-running' industry. If one crossed Meakin
+Street by way of Luck Row and kept his way among the courts ahead, he
+presently reached the main Bethnal Green Road, at the end whereof stood
+the great goods depot of a railway company. Here carts and vans went to
+and fro all day, laden with goods from the depot, and certain gangs
+among the Jagos preyed on these continually. A quick-witted scout stood
+on the look-out for such vehicles as went with unguarded tailboards. At
+the approach of one such he sent the shout '_Fat's a-runnin'!_' up Luck
+Row, and, quick at the signal, a gang scuttled down, by the court or
+passage which his waved hand might hint at, seized whatever could be
+snatched from the cart, and melted away into the courts, sometimes
+leaving a few hands behind to hinder and misdirect pursuit. Taking one
+capture with another, the thing paid very well; and besides, there were
+many vans laden with parcels of tobacco, not from the railway depot but
+from the tobacco factories hard by, a click from which was apt to prove
+especially lucrative. Dicky was a notable success as scout. The
+department was a fairly safe one, but it was not always easy to extract
+from the gang the few coppers that were regarded as sufficient share for
+service done. Moreover, Mr Weech was not pleased; for by now Dicky was
+near to being his most remunerative client, and the cart robberies
+counted nothing, for the fat's a-running boys fenced their swag with a
+publican at Hoxton. And though Dicky had grown out of his childish
+belief that Mr Weech could hear a mile away and see through a wall, he
+had a cautious dread of the weapon he supposed to lie ever to his
+patron's hand--betrayal to the police. In other respects things were
+easier. His father took no heed of what he did, and even his mother had
+so far accepted destiny as to ask if he had a copper or two, when there
+was a scarcity. Indeed Hannah Perrott filled her place in the Jago
+better than of old. She would gossip, she drew no very rigid line as to
+her acquaintance, and Dicky had seen her drunk. Still, for Old Jago
+Street she was a quiet woman, and she never brawled nor fought. Of
+fighting, indeed, Josh could do enough for the whole family, once again
+four in number. For the place of Looey, forgotten, was supplied by Em,
+aged two.
+
+When Dicky came home and recognised the clock on the mantel-piece, being
+the more certain because his mother told him it had come from Weech's,
+the thing irritated him strangely. Through all those four years since he
+had carried that clock to Mr Weech, he had never got rid of the wretched
+hunchback. He, too, went to the Board School in Honey Lane (it lay
+between Dove Lane and the Jago), but he went regularly, worked hard, and
+was a favourite with teachers. So far, Dicky was unconcerned. But scarce
+an ill chance came to him but, sooner or later, he found the hunchback
+at the back of it. If ever a teacher mysteriously found out that it was
+Dicky who had drawn his portrait, all nose and teeth, on the blackboard,
+the tale had come from Bobby Roper. Whenever Dicky, chancing upon school
+by ill luck on an afternoon when sums were to be done, essayed to copy
+answers from his neighbour's slate, up shot the hunchback's hand in an
+instant, the tale was told, and handers were Dicky's portion. Once,
+dinnerless and hungry, he had stolen a sandwich from a teacher's desk;
+and, though he had thought himself alone and unseen, the hunchback knew
+it, and pointed him out, white malice in his thin face and eager hate in
+his thrust finger. For a fortnight Dicky dared not pass a little fruit
+shop in Meakin Street, because of an attempt on an orange, betrayed by
+his misshapen schoolfellow, which brought him a hard chase from the
+fruiterer and a bad bruise on the spine from a board flung after him.
+The hunchback's whole energies--even his whole time--seemed to be
+devoted to watching him. Dicky, on his part, received no injuries
+meekly. In the beginning he had tried threats and public jeers at his
+enemy's infirmity. Then, on some especially exasperating occasion, he
+pounded Bobby Roper savagely about the head and capsized him into a
+mud-heap. But bodily reprisal, though he erected it into a practice,
+proved no deterrent. For the little hunchback, though he might cry at
+the pummelling, retorted with worse revenge of his own sort. And once or
+twice bystanders, seeing a deformed child thus treated, interfered with
+clouts on Dicky's ears. The victim, moreover, designed another
+retaliation. He would go to some bigger boy with a tale that Dicky had
+spoken vauntingly of fighting him and beating him hollow, with one hand.
+This brought the big boy after Dicky at once, with a hiding: except on
+some rare occasion when the hunchback rated his instrument of vengeance
+too high, and Dicky was able to beat him in truth. But this was a very
+uncommon mistake. And after this Dicky did not wait for specific
+provocation: he 'clumped' Bobby Roper, or rolled him in the gutter, as a
+matter of principle, whenever he could get hold of him.
+
+That afternoon Dicky had suffered again. Two days earlier, tea and cake
+had been provided by a benevolent manager for all who attended the
+school. Consequently the attendance was excellent, and included Dicky.
+But his attempt to secrete a pocketful of cake, to carry home for Em,
+was reported by Bobby Roper; and Dicky was hauled forth, deprived of his
+plunder, and expelled in disgrace. He waited outside and paid off the
+score fiercely, by the help of a very long and pliant cabbage stalk. But
+this afternoon Bill Bates, a boy a head taller than himself and two
+years older, had fallen on him suddenly in Lincoln Street, and, though
+Dicky fought desperately and kicked with much effect, had dealt him a
+thrashing that left him bruised, bleeding, dusty, and crying with rage
+and pain. This was the hunchback's doing, without a doubt. Dicky limped
+home, but was something comforted by an accident in Shoreditch High
+Street, whereby a coster's barrow-load of cough-drops was knocked over
+by a covered van, and the cough-drops were scattered in the mud. For
+while the carman and the coster flew at each other's name and address,
+and defamed each other's eyes and mother, Dicky gathered a handful of
+cough-drops, muddy, it is true, but easy to wipe. And so he made for
+home more cheerfully disposed: till the sight of the Ropers' old clock
+brought the hunchback to mind once more, and in bitter anger he resolved
+to search for him forthwith, and pass on the afternoon's hiding, with
+interest.
+
+As he emerged into the street, a hand was reached to catch him, which he
+dodged by instinct. He rushed back upstairs, and emptied his pockets,
+stowing away in a safe corner the rest of the cough-drops, the broken
+ruin he called his knife, some buttons and pieces of string, a bit of
+chalk, three little pieces of slate pencil and two marbles. Then he went
+down again into the street, confident in his destitution, and watched,
+forgetting the hunchback in the excitement of the spectacle.
+
+The loafers from the corners had conceived a sudden notion of
+co-operation, and had joined forces to the array of twenty or thirty.
+Confident in their numbers, they swept the street, stopping every
+passenger--man, woman or child--and emptying all pockets. A straggler on
+the outskirts of the crowd, a hobbledehoy like most of the rest, had
+snatched at but had lost Dicky, and was now busy, with four or five
+others, rolling a woman, a struggling heap of old clothes and skinny
+limbs, in the road. It was Biddy Flynn, too old and worn for anything
+but honest work, who sold oranges and nuts from a basket, and who had
+been caught on her way out for her evening's trade in High Street. She
+was a fortunate capture, being a lone woman with all her possessions
+about her. Under her skirt, and tied round her waist with string, she
+kept her money-bag; and it was soon found and dragged away, yielding two
+and eightpence farthing and a lucky shoe-tip, worn round and bright. She
+had, moreover, an old brass brooch; but unfortunately her wedding ring,
+worn to pin-wire, could not be got past the knotted knuckle--though it
+would have been worth little in any case. So Biddy Flynn, exhausted with
+plunging and screaming, was left, and her empty basket was flung at her.
+She staggered away, wailing and rolling her head, with her hand to the
+wall; and the gang, sharing out, sucked oranges with relish, and turned
+to fresh exploits. Dicky watched from the Jago Court passage.
+
+Business slackened for a little while, and the loafers were
+contemplating a raid in force on Mother Gapp's till, when a grown lad
+ran in pell-mell from Luck Row with a square parcel clipped under his
+arm--a parcel of aspect well known among the fat's a-running boys--a
+parcel that meant tobacco. He was collared at once.
+
+'Stow it, Bill!' he cried breathlessly, recognising his captor. 'The
+bloke's a-comin'!'
+
+But half-a-dozen hands were on his plunder, it was snatched away, and he
+was flung back on the flags. There was a clatter on the stones of Luck
+Row, and a light van came rattling into Old Jago Street, the horse
+galloping, the carman lashing and shouting:--'Stop 'im! Stop thief!'
+
+The sight was so novel that for a moment the gang merely stared and
+grinned. This man must be a greenhorn--new to the neighbourhood--to
+venture a load of goods up Luck Row. And it was tobacco, too. He was
+pale and flustered, and he called wildly, as he looked this way and
+that:--'A man's stole somethin' auf my van. Where's 'e gawn?'
+
+'No good, guv'nor,' cried one. 'The ball's stopped rollin'. You're lawst
+'im.'
+
+'My Gawd!' said the man, in a sweat, 'I'm done. There's two quid's worth
+o' 'bacca--an' I on'y got the job o' Monday--bin out nine munse!'
+
+'Was it a parcel like this 'ere?' asked another, chuckling, and lifting
+a second packet over the tailboard.
+
+'Yus--put it down! Gawd--wotcher up to? 'Ere--'elp! 'elp!'
+
+The gang were over the van, guffawing and flinging out the load. The
+carman yelled aloud, and fought desperately with his whip--Bill Hanks
+is near blind of an eye now from one cut; but he was the worse for it.
+For he was knocked off the van in a heap, and, as he lay, they cleared
+his pockets, and pulled off his boots; those that had caught the sting
+of the whip kicking him about the head till it but shifted in the slime
+at the stroke, an inanimate lump.
+
+There was talk of how to deal with the horse and van. To try to sell
+them was too large a job, and too risky. So, as it was growing dusk, the
+senseless carman was put on the floor of the van, the tailboard was
+raised, and one of the gang led the horse away, to lose the whole thing
+in the busy streets.
+
+Here was a big haul, and many of the crowd busied themselves in getting
+it out of sight, and scouting out among the fences to arrange sales.
+Those who remained grew less active, and hung at the corner of Luck Row,
+little more than an ordinary corner-group of loafers.
+
+Then Dicky remembered the hunchback, and slouched off to Dove Lane. But
+he could see nothing of Bobby Roper. The Jago and Dove Lane were
+districts ever at feud, active or smouldering, save for brief intervals
+of ostentatious reconciliation, serving to render the next attack on
+Dove Lane the more savage--for invariably the Jagos were aggressors and
+victors. Dicky was careful in his lurkings, therefore: lest he should be
+recognised and set upon by more Dove Lane boys than would be convenient.
+He knew where the Ropers lived, and he went and hung about the door.
+Once he fancied he could hear a disjointed tinkle, as of a music-box
+grown infirm, but he was not sure of it. And in the end he contented
+himself, for the present, with flinging a stone through the Ropers'
+window, and taking to his heels.
+
+The Jago was black with night, the rats came and went, and the
+cosh-carriers lurked on landings. On a step, Pigeony Poll, drunk because
+of a little gin and no food, sang hideously and wept. The loafers had
+dispersed to spend their afternoon's makings. The group which Dicky had
+left by Luck Row corner, indeed, had been discouraged early in the
+evening in consequence of an attempt at 'turning over' old Beveridge, as
+he unsuspectingly stalked among them, in from his city round. For the
+old man whipped out his case-knife and drove it into the flesh of Nobber
+Sugg's arm, at the shoulder--stabbed, too, at another, and ripped his
+coat. So Nobber Sugg, with blood streaming through his sleeve, went off
+with two more to tie up the arm; and old Beveridge, grinning and
+mumbling fiercely, strode about the street, knife in hand, for ten
+minutes, ere he grew calm enough to go his way. This Tommy Rann told
+Dicky, sitting in the back-yard and smoking a pipe; a pipe charged with
+tobacco pillaged from a tin-full which his father had bought, at about
+fourpence a pound, from a loafer. And both boys crawled indoors deadly
+sick.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+Josh Perrott was at church on Sunday morning, as Father Sturt had bid
+him. Not because of the bidding, but because the vicar overtook him and
+Kiddo Cook in Meakin Street, and hauled them in, professing to be much
+gratified at their punctuality, and charging them never to fall away
+from the habit. The two Jagos, with dubious grins, submitted as they
+must, and were in a little while surprised to find others arriving,
+friends and acquaintances never suspected of church-going. The fact was,
+that Father Sturt, by dint of long effort, had so often brought so many
+to his stable-church, as he had now brought Josh and Kiddo, that the
+terrors and embarrassments of the place had worn off, and many, finding
+nothing more attractive elsewhere, would make occasional attendances of
+their own motion. Wet Sundays, particularly, inclined them to church:
+where there might be a fire, where at least there was a clean room, with
+pictures on the wall, where there were often flowers, where there was
+always music, and where Father Sturt made an address of a quarter of an
+hour, which nobody ever suspected of being a sermon; an address which
+one might doze over or listen to, as one might be disposed; but which
+most listened to, more or less, partly because of an uneasy feeling that
+Father Sturt would know if they did not, and partly because it was very
+easy to understand, was not oppressively minatory, was spoken with an
+intimate knowledge of themselves, and was, indeed, something of a
+refreshing novelty, being the simple talk of a gentleman.
+
+Josh Perrott and Kiddo Cook were not altogether sorry they had come. It
+was a rest. Stable though it had been, they had never sat in so pleasant
+a room before. There was nothing to do, no constant watch to be kept, no
+police to avoid, and their wits had a holiday. They forgot things. Their
+courage never rose so high as to build the thought; but in truth pipes
+would have made them happy.
+
+The address being done, Father Sturt announced the purchase of the site
+for the new church, and briefly described his scheme. He would give
+tenants good notice, he said, before the houses were destroyed.
+Meantime, they must pay rent; though most of the amounts would be
+reduced.
+
+And after the benediction, Father Sturt, from his window over the closed
+shop, saw Josh Perrott and Kiddo Cook guffawing and elbowing one another
+up Luck Row. Each was accusing the other of having tried to sing.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+There was much talk of Father Sturt's announcement. Many held it a shame
+that so much money, destined for the benefit of the Jago, should be
+spent in bricks and mortar, instead of being distributed among
+themselves. They fell to calculating the price of the land and houses,
+and to working it out laboriously in the denomination of pots and
+gallons. More: it was felt to be a grave social danger that Jago Court
+should be extinguished. What would become of the Jago without Jago
+Court? Where would Sunday morning be spent? Where would the fights come
+off, and where was so convenient a place for pitch and toss? But mainly
+they feared the police. Jago Court was an unfailing sanctuary, a city of
+refuge ever ready, ever secure. There were times when two or three of
+the police, hot in the chase, would burst into the Jago at the heels of
+a flying marauder. Then the runaway would make straight for the archway,
+and, once he was in Jago Court, danger was over. For he had only to run
+into one of the ever-open doors at right or left, and out into
+back-yards and other houses; or, better, to scramble over the low fence
+opposite, through the back door before him, and so into New Jago Street.
+Beyond the archway the police could not venture, except in large
+companies. A young constable who tried it once, getting ahead of two
+companions in his ardour, was laid low as he emerged from the passage,
+by a fire-grate adroitly let drop from an upper window.
+
+The blotting out of such a godsend of a place as this would be a
+calamity. The Jago would never be the same again. As it was, the Old
+Jago was a very convenient, comfortable sort of place, they argued. They
+could not imagine themselves living anywhere else. But assuredly it
+would be the Jago no longer without Jago Court. And this thing was to be
+done, too, with money got together for their benefit! The sole
+explanation the Jago could supply was the one that at last, with
+arithmetical variations, prevailed. The landlords were to be paid a sum
+(varying in Jago estimation from a hundred pounds to a hundred thousand)
+for the houses and the ground, and of this they were secretly to return
+to Father Sturt a certain share (generally agreed on as half), as his
+private fee for bringing about so desirable a transaction. Looked at
+from all points, this appeared to be the most plausible explanation: for
+no other could reasonably account for Father Sturt's activity. No wonder
+he could afford to reduce some of the rents! Was he not already
+receiving princely wages (variously supposed to be something from ten
+pounds to thirty pounds a week) from the Government, for preaching every
+Sunday?
+
+Still the rents were to be reduced: that was the immediate
+consideration, and nothing but an immediate consideration carried weight
+in the Jago, where a shilling to-day was to be preferred to a constant
+income beginning in a month's time. The first effect of the announcement
+was a rush of applications for rooms in the doomed houses, each
+applicant demanding to be accommodated by the eviction of somebody
+already established, but now disinterestedly discovered to be a bad
+tenant. They were all disappointed, but the residents had better luck
+than they had hoped. For the unexpected happened, and the money for a
+part of the new buildings was suddenly guaranteed. Wherefore Father
+Sturt, knowing that many would be hard put to it to find shelter when
+the houses came down, and guessing that rents would rise with the
+demand, determined to ask none for the little while the tenements
+endured. Scarce had he made his decision known ere he regretted it,
+popular as it was. For he reflected that the money saved would merely
+melt, and that at the inevitable turning out, not a soul would be the
+better off for the relief, but, indeed, might find it harder than ever
+to pay rent after the temporary easement. It would have been better
+rigidly to exact the rent, and return it in lump to each tenant as he
+left. The sum would have been an inducement to leave peaceably--a matter
+in which trouble was to be expected. But then, what did any windfall of
+shillings bring in the Jago? What but a drunk? This was one of Father
+Sturt's thousand perplexities, and he could but hope that, perhaps, he
+had done right after all.
+
+The old buildings were sold, as they stood, to the house-wreckers, and
+on the house-wreckers devolved the work of getting the lodgers out. For
+weeks the day was deferred, but it drew very near at last, and a tall
+hoarding was put up. Next morning it had vanished; but there was a loud
+crackling where the Jagos boiled their pots; Dicky Perrott and Tommy
+Rann had a bonfire in Edge Lane; and Jerry Gullen's canary sweated
+abroad before a heavy load of cheap firewood.
+
+Then Josh Perrott and Billy Leary, his old enemy, were appointed joint
+guardians of the new hoarding, each to get half-a-crown on every morning
+when the fence was found intact. And in the end there came eviction day,
+and once more the police held the Jago in force, escorting gangs of men
+with tumbrils.
+
+As for the Perrotts, they could easily find another room, at the high
+rent always charged for the privilege of residence in the Jago. To have
+remained in one room four or five years, and to have paid rent with
+indifferent good regularity was a feat sufficiently rare to be
+notorious, and to cause way to be made for them wherever a room was
+falling vacant, or could be emptied. They went no farther than across
+the way, to a room wherein a widow had died over her sack-making two
+days before, and had sat on the floor with her head between her knees
+for hours, while her children, not understanding, cried that they were
+hungry. These children were now gone to the workhouse: more fortunate
+than the many they left behind. And the room was a very fair one, ten
+feet square or so.
+
+The rest of the tenants thought not at all of new quarters, and did
+nothing to find them, till they found themselves and their belongings
+roofless in Old Jago Street. Then with one accord they demanded lodgings
+of the vicar. Most of them had never inhabited any rooms so long as they
+had these which they must now leave--having been ejected again and
+again because of unpaid rent. Nevertheless, they clamoured for redress
+as they might have clamoured had they never changed dwellings in their
+lives.
+
+Nobody resisted the police; for there were too many of them. Moreover,
+Father Sturt was there, and few had hardihood for any but their best
+behaviour in his presence. Still, there were disputes among the Jagos
+themselves, that sometimes came very near to fights. Ginger Stagg's
+missis professed to recognise a long-lost property in a tin kettle
+brought into the outer air among the belongings of Mrs Walsh. The
+miscellaneous rags and sticks that were Cocko Harnwell's household goods
+got mingled in the roadway with those appertaining to the Fishers; and
+their assortment without a turn of family combat was a task which tried
+the vicar's influence to the utmost. Mrs Rafferty, too, was suspected of
+undue pride in a cranky deal wash-stand, and thereby of a disposition to
+sneer at the humbler turn-out of the Regans from the next floor: giving
+occasion for a shrill and animated row.
+
+The weather was dry, fortunately, and the evicted squatted in the
+roadway, by their heaps, or on them, squabbling and lamenting. Ginger
+Stagg, having covered certain crockery with the old family mattress,
+forgetfully sat on it, and came upon Father Sturt with an indignant
+demand for compensation.
+
+Father Sturt's efforts to stimulate a search for new lodgings met with
+small success at first. It was felt that, no doubt, there were lodgings
+to be had, but they would be open to the fatal objection of costing
+something; and the Jago temperament could neither endure nor understand
+payment for what had once been given for nothing. Father Sturt, the
+Jagos argued, had given them free quarters for so long. Then why should
+he stop now? If they cleared out in order to make room for his new
+church, in common fairness he should find them similar lodging on the
+same terms. So they sat and waited for him to do it.
+
+At length the vicar set to work with them in good earnest, carried away
+with him a family or two at a time, and inducted them to rooms of his
+own finding. And hereat others, learning that in these cases rent in
+advance was exacted, bestirred themselves: reflecting that if rent must
+be paid they might as well choose their own rooms as take those that
+Father Sturt might find. Of course the thing was not done without
+payments from the vicar's pocket. Some were wholly destitute; others
+could not muster enough to pay that advance of rent which alone could
+open a Jago tenancy. Distinguishing the genuine impecuniosity from the
+merely professed, with the insight that was now a sixth sense with him,
+Father Sturt helped sparingly and in secret; for a precedent of
+almsgiving was an evil thing in the Jago, confirming the shiftlessness
+which was already a piece of Jago nature, and setting up long affliction
+for the almsgiver. Enough of such precedents existed; and the inevitable
+additions thereto were a work of anxious responsibility and jealous
+care.
+
+So the bivouac in Old Jago Street melted away. For one thing, there were
+those among the dispossessed who would not waste time in unproductive
+inactivity just then; for war had arisen with Dove Lane, and spoils were
+going. Dove Lane was no very reputable place, but it was not like the
+Jago. In the phrase of the district, the Dove Laners were pretty thick,
+but the Jagos were thick as glue. There were many market-porters among
+the Dove Laners, and at this, their prosperous season, they and their
+friends resorted to a shop in Meakin Street, kept by an 'ikey' tailor,
+there to buy the original out-and-out downy benjamins, or the celebrated
+bang-up kicksies, cut saucy, with artful buttons and a double fakement
+down the sides. And hereabout they were apt to be set upon by Jagos;
+overthrown by superior numbers; bashed; and cleaned out. Or, if the
+purchases had been made, they were flimped of their kicksies, benjies or
+daisies, as the case might be. So that a fight with Dove Lane might be
+an affair of some occasional profit; and it became no loyal Jago to idle
+in the stronghold.
+
+Father Sturt's task was nearly over, when, returning to Old Jago Street,
+he saw Dicky Perrott sitting by a still-remaining heap--a heap small and
+poor even among those others. The Perrotts had been decorously settled
+in their new home since early morning; but here was Dicky, guarding a
+heap with a baby on it, and absorbed in the weaving of rush bags.
+
+'That's right, Dicky my boy,' said Father Sturt in the approving voice
+that a Jago would do almost anything--except turn honest--to hear. And
+Dicky, startled, looked up, flushed and happy, over his shoulder.
+
+'Rush bags, eh?' the vicar went on, stooping and handing Dicky another
+rush from the heap. 'And whose are they?'
+
+The bags, the rushes, the heap, and the baby belonged to Mrs Bates, the
+widow, who was now in search of a new room. Dicky had often watched the
+weaving of fishmongers' frails, and, since it was work in which he had
+had no opportunity of indulging, it naturally struck him as a
+fascinating pastime. So that he was delighted by the chance which he had
+taken, and Mrs Bates, for her part, was not sorry to find somebody to
+mind her property. Moreover, by hard work and the skill begot of much
+practice, she was able to earn a sum of some three farthings an hour at
+the rush bags: a profit which her cupidity made her reluctant to lose,
+for even half an hour. And thus to have Dicky carry on the business--and
+in his enthusiasm he did it very well--was a further consideration.
+
+Father Sturt chatted with Dicky till the boy could scarce plait for very
+pride. Would not Dicky like to work regularly every day, asked Father
+Sturt, and earn wages? Dicky could see no graceful answer but the
+affirmative; and in sober earnest he thought he would. Father Sturt took
+hold of Dicky's vanity. Was he not capable of something better than
+other Jago boys? Why should he not earn regular wages, and live
+comfortably, well fed and clothed, with no fear of the police, and no
+shame for what he did? _He_ might do it, when others could not. They
+were not clever enough. They called themselves 'clever' and 'wide;'
+'but,' said Father Sturt, 'is there one of them that can deceive me?'
+And Dicky knew there was not one. Most did no work, the vicar's argument
+went on, because they had neither the pluck to try nor the intelligence
+to accomplish. Else why did they live the wretched Jago life instead of
+take the pleasanter time of the decent labourer?
+
+Dicky, already zealous at work as exampled in rush bag-making, listened
+with wistful pride. Yes, if he could, he would work and take his place
+over the envious heads of his Jago friends. But how? Nobody would employ
+a boy living in the Jago. That was notorious. The address was a
+topsy-turvy testimonial for miles round.
+
+All the same when Mrs Bates at last took away her belongings, Dicky ran
+off in delighted amaze to tell his mother and Em that he was going to
+tea at Father Sturt's rooms.
+
+And the wreckers tore down the foul old houses, laying bare the secret
+dens of a century of infamy; lifting out the wide sashes of the old
+'weavers' windows'--the one good feature in the structures; letting
+light and air at last into the subterraneous basements where men and
+women had swarmed, and bred, and died, like wolves in their lairs; and
+emerging from clouds of choking dust, each man a colony of vermin. But
+there were rooms which the wreckers--no jack-a-dandies neither--flatly
+refused to enter; and nothing would make them but much coaxing, the
+promise of extra pay, and the certainty of much immediate beer.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+Mr Grinder kept a shop in the Bethnal Green Road. It was announced in
+brilliant lettering as an 'oil, colour and Italian warehouse,' and
+there, in addition to the oil and the colour, and whatever of Italian
+there might have been, he sold pots, pans, kettles, brooms, shovels,
+mops, lamps, nails, and treacle. It was a shop ever too tight for its
+stock, which burst forth at every available opening, and heaped so high
+on the paving that the window was half buried in a bank of shining tin.
+Father Sturt was one of the best customers: the oil, candles and
+utensils needed for church and club all coming from Mr Grinder's. Mr
+Grinder was losing his shop-boy, who had found a better situation; and
+Father Sturt determined that, could but the oil-man be persuaded, Dicky
+Perrott should be the new boy. Mr Grinder was persuaded. Chiefly
+perhaps, because the vicar undertook to make good the loss, should the
+experiment end in theft; partly because it was policy to oblige a good
+customer; and partly, indeed, because Mr Grinder was willing to give
+such a boy a chance in life, for he was no bad fellow, as
+oil-and-colourmen go, and had been an errand boy himself.
+
+So that there came a Monday morning when Dicky, his clothes as well
+mended as might be (for Hannah Perrott, no more than another Jago, could
+disobey Father Sturt), and a cut-down apron of his mother's tied before
+him, stood by Mr Grinder's bank of pots and kettles, in an eager agony
+to sell something, and near blind with the pride of the thing. He had
+been waiting at the shop-door long ere Mr Grinder was out of bed; and
+now, set to guard the outside stock--a duty not to be neglected in that
+neighbourhood--he brushed a tin pot here and there with his sleeve, and
+longed for some Jago friend to pass and view him in his new greatness.
+The goods he watched over were an unfailing source of interest; and he
+learned by much repetition the prices of all the saucepans, painted in
+blue distemper on the tin, and ranging from eightpence-halfpenny, on the
+big pots in the bottom row, to three-halfpence on the very little ones
+at the top. And there were long ranks of little paraffin lamps at a
+penny--the sort that had set fire to a garret in Half Jago Street a
+month since, and burnt old Mother Leary to a greasy cinder. With a
+smaller array of a superior quality at fourpence-halfpenny--just like
+the one that had burst at Jerry Gullen's, and burnt the bed. While over
+his head swung doormats at one-and-eightpence, with penny mousetraps
+dangling from their corners.
+
+When he grew more accustomed to his circumstances, he bethought him to
+collect a little dirt, and rub it down the front of his apron, to give
+himself a well-worked and business-like appearance; and he greatly
+impeded women who looked at the saucepans and the mousetraps, ere they
+entered the shop, by his anxiety to cut them off from Mr Grinder and
+serve them himself. He remembered the boy at the toy-shop in Bishopsgate
+Street, years ago, who had chased him through Spitalfields; and he
+wished that some lurching youngster would snatch a mousetrap, that he
+might make a chase himself.
+
+At Mr Grinder's every call Dicky was prompt and willing; for every new
+duty was a fresh delight, and the whole day a prolonged game of real
+shopkeeping. And at his tea--he was to have tea each day in addition to
+three and sixpence every Saturday--he took scarce five minutes. There
+was a trolley--just such a thing as porters used at railway stations,
+but smaller--which was his own particular implement, his own to pack
+parcels on for delivery to such few customers as did not carry away
+their own purchases: and to acquire the dexterous management of this
+trolley was a pure joy. He bolted his tea to start the sooner on a
+trolley-journey to a public-house two hundred yards away.
+
+His enthusiasm for work as an amusement cooled in a day or two, but all
+his pride in it remained. The fight with Dove Lane waxed amain, but
+Dicky would not be tempted into more than a distant interest in it. In
+his day-dreams he saw himself a tradesman, with a shop of his own and
+the name 'R. Perrott,' with a gold flourish, over the door. He would
+employ a boy himself then; and there would be a parlour, with
+stuff-bottomed chairs and a shade of flowers, and Em grown up and
+playing on the piano. Truly Father Sturt was right: the hooks were
+fools, and the straight game was the better.
+
+Bobby Roper, the hunchback, went past the shop once, and saw him. Dicky,
+minding his new dignity, ignored his enemy, and for the first time for a
+year and more, allowed him to pass without either taunt or blow. The
+other, astonished at Dicky's new occupation, came back and back again,
+staring, from a safe distance, at Dicky and the shop. Dicky, on his
+part, took no more notice than to assume an ostentatious vigilance: so
+that the hunchback, baring his teeth in a snigger of malice, at last
+turned on his heel and rolled off.
+
+Twice Kiddo Cook passed, but made no sign of recognition beyond a wink;
+and Dicky felt grateful for Kiddo's obvious fear of compromising him.
+Once old Beveridge came by, striding rapidly, his tatters flying, and
+the legend 'Hard Up' chalked on his hat, as was his manner in his town
+rambles. He stopped abruptly at sight of Dicky, stooped, and
+said:--'Dicky Perrott? Hum--hum--hey?' Then he hurried on, doubtless
+conceiving just such a fear as Kiddo Cook's. As for Tommy Rann, his
+affections were alienated by Dicky's outset refusal to secrete treacle
+in a tin mug for a midnight carouse; and he did not show himself. So
+matters went for near a week.
+
+But Mr Weech missed Dicky sadly. It was rare for a day to pass without a
+visit from Dicky, and Dicky had a way of bringing good things. Mr Weech
+would not have sold Dicky's custom for ten shillings a week. So that
+when Mr Weech inquired, and found that Dicky was at work in an oil-shop,
+he was naturally annoyed. Moreover, if Dicky Perrott got into _that_ way
+of life, he would have no fear for himself, and might get talking
+inconveniently among his new friends about the business affairs of Mr
+Aaron Weech. And at this reflection that philanthropist grew
+thoughtful.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+Dicky had gone on an errand, and Mr Grinder was at the shop door, when
+there appeared before him a whiskered and smirking figure, with a quick
+glance each way along the street, and a long and smiling one at the
+oil-man's necktie.
+
+'Good mornin', Mr Grinder, good mornin' sir.' Mr Weech stroked his left
+palm with his right fist and nodded pleasantly. 'I'm in business meself,
+over in Meakin Street--name of Weech: p'r'aps you know the shop? I--I
+jist 'opped over to ask'--Grinder led the way into the shop--'to ask
+(so's to make things quite sure y'know, though no doubt it's all right)
+to ask if it's correct you're awfferin' brass roastin'-jacks at a
+shillin' each.'
+
+'Brass roastin'-jacks at a shillin'?' exclaimed Grinder, shocked at the
+notion. 'Why, no!'
+
+Mr Weech appeared mildly surprised. 'Nor yut seven-poun' jars o' jam an'
+pickles at sixpence?' he pursued, with his eye on those ranged behind
+the counter.
+
+'No!'
+
+'Nor doormats at fourpence?'
+
+'Fourpence? Cert'nly not!'
+
+Mr Weech's face fell into a blank perplexity. He pawed his ear with a
+doubtful air, murmuring absently:--'Well I'm sure 'e _said_ fourpence:
+an' sixpence for pickles, an' bring 'em round after the shop was shut.
+But there', he added, more briskly, 'there's no 'arm done, an' no doubt
+it's a mistake.' He turned as though to leave, but Grinder restrained
+him.
+
+'But look 'ere,' he said, 'I want to know about this. Wotjer mean? _'Oo_
+was goin' to bring round pickles after the shop was shut? _'Oo_ said
+fourpence for doormats?'
+
+'Oh, I expect it's jest a little mistake, that's all,' answered Weech,
+making another motion toward the door; 'an' I don't want to git nobody
+into trouble.'
+
+'Trouble? Nice trouble I'd be in if I sold brass smoke-jacks for a bob!
+There's somethink 'ere as I ought to know about. Tell me about it
+straight.'
+
+Weech looked thoughtfully at the oil-man's top waistcoat button for a
+few seconds, and then said:--'Yus, p'raps I better. I can feel for you,
+Mr Grinder, 'avin' a feelin' 'art, an' bein' in business meself. Where's
+your boy?'
+
+'Gawn out.'
+
+'Comin' back soon?'
+
+'Not yut. Come in the back-parlour.'
+
+There Mr Weech, with ingenuous reluctance, assured Mr Grinder that Dicky
+Perrott had importuned him to buy the goods in question at the prices he
+had mentioned, together with others--readily named now that the oil-man
+swallowed so freely--and that they were to be delivered and paid for at
+night when Dicky left work. But perhaps, Mr Weech concluded, parading an
+obstinate belief in human nature, perhaps the boy, being new to the
+business, had mistaken the prices, and was merely doing his best to push
+his master's trade.
+
+'No fear o' that,' said Grinder, shaking his head gloomily. 'Not the
+least fear o' that. 'E knows the cheapest doormats I got's one an'
+six--I 'eard him tell customers so outside a dozen times; an' anyone can
+see the smoke-jacks is ticketed five an 'nine'--as Mr Weech had seen,
+when he spoke of them. 'I thought that boy was too eager an' willin' to
+be quite genavin,' Dicky's master went on. ''E ain't 'ad me yut, that's
+one comfort: if anythin' 'ud bin gawn I'd 'a' missed it. But out 'e goes
+as soon as 'e comes back: you can take yer davy o' that!'
+
+'Ah,' replied Mr Weech, 'it's fearful the wickedness there is about,
+ain't it? It's enough to break yer 'art. Sich a neighb'r'ood, too! Wy,
+if it was known as I'd give you this 'ere little friendly information,
+bein' in business meself an' knowin' wot it is, my life wouldn't be safe
+a hower. It wouldn't, Mr Grinder.'
+
+'Wouldn't it?' said Mr Grinder. 'You mean them in the Jago, I s'pose.'
+
+'Yus. They're a awful lot, Mr Grinder--you've no idear. The father o'
+this 'ere boy as I've warned you aginst, 'e's in with a desprit gang,
+an' they'd murder me if they thought I'd come an' told you honest, w'en
+you might 'a' bin robbed, as is my nature to. They would indeed. So o'
+course you won't say wot I toldjer, nor 'oo give you this 'ere
+honourable friendly warnin'--not to nobody.'
+
+'That's awright,' answered the simple Grinder, 'I won't let on. But out
+'e goes, promp'. I'm obliged to ye, Mr Weech. Er--r wot'll ye take?'
+
+Weech put away the suggestion with a virtuous palm:--'Nothink at all, Mr
+Grinder, thanks all the same. I never touch nothink; an' I'm glad to--to
+do any moral job, so to speak, as comes in my way. 'Scatter seeds o'
+kindness' you know, as the--the Psalm says, Mr Grinder. Your boy ain't
+back, is 'e?'
+
+And after peering cautiously, Mr Weech went his way.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+Dicky completed his round, and pushed his unladen trolley Grinder-ward
+with a fuller sense of responsibility than ever. For he carried money. A
+publican had paid him four and threepence, and he had taken two and
+tenpence elsewhere. He had left his proud signature, pencilled large and
+black, on two receipts, and he stopped in a dozen doorways to count the
+money over again, and make sure that all was right. Between the halts he
+added four and three to two and ten mentally, and proved his sum correct
+by subtracting each in turn from seven and a penny. And at last he stood
+his trolley on end by the bank of saucepans, and entered the shop.
+
+'Walker's is paid, an' Wilkins is paid,' said Dicky, putting down the
+money. 'Two an' ten an' four an' three's seven an' a penny.'
+
+Mr Grinder looked steadily and sourly at Dicky, and counted. He pitched
+the odd penny into the till and shook the rest of the coins in his
+closed hand, still staring moodily in the boy's face. 'It's three an'
+six a week you come 'ere at,' he said.
+
+'Yus sir,' Dicky replied, since Grinder seemed to expect an answer. The
+supreme moment when he should take his first wages had been the week's
+beacon to him, reddening and brightening as Saturday night grew nearer.
+
+'Three an' six a week an' yer tea.'
+
+Dicky wondered.
+
+'So as if I found out anythink about--say Brass Roastin'-jacks for
+instance--I could give ye yer three an' six an' start y' auf, unless I
+did somethin' wuss.'
+
+Dicky was all incomprehension; but something made him feel a little
+sick.
+
+'But s'posin' I _didn't_ find out anythink about--say Seven-pun' Jars o'
+Pickles--an' s'pose I wasn't disposed to suspect anythink in regard
+to--say Doormats; then I could either give ye a week s notice or pay y'
+a week's money an' clear y' out on the spot, without no more trouble.'
+
+Mr Grinder paused, and still looked at Dicky with calm dislike. Then he
+added, as though in answer to himself, 'Yus.' ...
+
+He dropped the money slowly from his right hand to his left. Dicky's
+mouth was dry, and the drawers and pickle-jars swam before him at each
+side of Grinder's head. What did it mean?
+
+''Ere y' are,' cried Mr Grinder, with sudden energy, thrusting his hand
+across the counter. 'Two three-and-sixes is seven shillin's, an' you can
+git yer tea at 'ome with yer dirty little sister. Git out o' my shop!'
+
+Dicky's hand closed mechanically on the money, and after a second's
+pause, he found broken speech. 'W--w--wot for, sir?' he asked, huskily.
+'I ain't done nothink!'
+
+'No, an' you sha'n't do nothink, that's more. Out ye go! If I see ye
+near the place agin I'll 'ave ye locked up!'
+
+Dicky slunk to the door. He felt the sobs coming, but he turned at the
+threshold and said with tremulous lips:--'Woncher gimme a chance, sir?
+S'elp me, I done me best. I--'
+
+Mr Grinder made a short rush from the back of the shop, and Dicky gave
+up and fled.
+
+It was all over. There could never be a shop with 'R. Perrott' painted
+over it, now; there would be no parlour with stuff-bottomed chairs and a
+piano for Em to play. He was cut off from the trolley for ever. Dicky
+was thirteen, and at that age the children of the Jago were past
+childish tears; but tears he could not smother, even till he might find
+a hiding-place: they burst out shamefully in the open street.
+
+He took dark turnings, and hid his head in doorways. It was very bitter.
+At last, when the sobs grew fewer, he remembered the money gripped in
+his wet fist. It was a consolation. Seven shillings was a vast sum in
+Dicky's eyes; until that day he had never handled so much in his life.
+It would have been handsome recompense, he thought, for any trouble in
+the world but this. He must take it home, of course; it might avail to
+buy sympathy of his father and mother. But then, to think he might have
+had as much every fortnight of his life, a good tea every day, and the
+proud responsibility, and the trolley! At this his lips came awry again,
+his eyes sought his sleeve, and he turned to another doorway.
+
+His glance fell on the white apron, now smudged and greased in good
+earnest. It made him feel worse; so he untied it and stuffed it away
+under his jacket. He wondered vaguely what had occurred to irritate Mr
+Grinder, and why he talked of pickles and doormats; but the sorrow of it
+all afflicted him to the extinction of such minor speculation. And in
+this misery he dragged his reluctant feet toward the Old Jago.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+He handed his father the seven shillings, and received a furious belting
+for losing his situation. He cried quietly, but it was not because of
+the strap. All he feared now was to meet Father Sturt. He had rather
+fifty beltings than Father Sturt's reproaches; and, having disgraced
+himself with Mr Grinder in some mysterious way which it was beyond his
+capacity to understand, what but reproaches could he expect from the
+vicar? The whole world was against him. As for himself, he was hopeless:
+plainly he must have some incomprehensible defect of nature, since he
+offended, do as he might, and could neither understand nor redeem his
+fault. He wondered if it had been so with little Neddy Wright, who had
+found the world too ruthless for him at ten; and had tied a brick to
+his neck, as he had seen done with needless dogs, and let himself
+timidly down into the canal at Haggerstone Bridge.
+
+So he shuffled through Jago Row, when a hand came on his shoulder and a
+hoarse voice said:--'Wot's the matter, Dicky?'
+
+He turned, and saw the mild, coarse face of Pigeony Poll, the jaw
+whereof was labouring on something tough and sticky. Poll pulled from
+her pocket a glutinous paper, clinging about a cohesive lump of broken
+toffee--the one luxury of her moneyed times. ''Ave a bit,' she said.
+'Wot's the matter?'
+
+But Dicky thrust the hand away and fled, for he feared another burst of
+tears. His eyes were bad enough as it was, and he longed to hide himself
+in some hole.
+
+He turned into New Jago Street. Hither it was that Jerry Gullen had
+betaken himself with his family and the Canary, after the great
+eviction. Dicky slackened his pace, loitered at Jerry's doorway, and
+presently found himself in the common passage. It was long since he had
+had a private interview with Jerry Gullen's canary: for, indeed, he was
+thirteen--he was no longer a child, in fact!--and it was not well that
+he should indulge in such foolish weakness. Nevertheless he went as far
+as the back door. There stood the old donkey, mangy and infirm as ever,
+but apparently no nearer the end. The wood of the fence was bitten in
+places, but it was not as yet gnawed to the general whiteness and
+roundness of that in Canary's old abode. Canary, indeed, was fortunate
+to-day, for at the sound of Dicky's step he lifted his nose from a small
+heap of straw, dust, and mouldy hay, swept into a corner. Dicky stepped
+into the yard, and put his hand on Canary's neck; presently he glanced
+guiltily at the windows above. Nobody was looking. And in five minutes
+Dicky, aged as he was, had told Canary his troubles, while new tears
+wetted the ragged crest and dropped into the dusty straw.
+
+Now his grief lost some of its edge. Ashamed as he was, he had a
+shapeless, unapprehended notion that Canary was the sole creature alive
+that could understand and feel with him. And Canary poked his nose under
+the old jacket and sniffed in sympathy, as the broken lining tickled
+him. Dicky's intellectuals began to arrange themselves. Plainly, Mr
+Weech's philosophy was right after all. He was of the Jago, and he must
+prey on the outer world, as all the Jago did; not stray foolishly off
+the regular track in chase of visions, and fall headlong. Father Sturt
+was a creature of another mould. Who was he, Dicky Perrott, that he
+should break away from the Jago habit, and strain after another nature?
+What could come of it but defeat and bitterness? As old Beveridge had
+said, the Jago had got him. Why should he fight against the inevitable,
+and bruise himself? The ways out of the Jago old Beveridge had told him,
+years ago. Gaol, the gallows and the High Mob. There was his chance, his
+aspiration, his goal: the High Mob. To dream of oil-shops or regular
+wages was foolishness. His bed was made in the Jago, and he must lie on
+it. His hope in life, if he might have a hope at all, was to be of the
+High Mob. Spare nobody, stop at nothing, do his devilmost: old Beveridge
+had said that years ago. The task was before him, and he must not balk
+at it. As for gaol and the gallows, well! There they were, and he could
+not help it; ill ways out of the Jago, both, but still--ways out.
+
+He rubbed his face carefully with his sleeve, put away his foolish
+ambitions, and went forth with a brave heart: to accomplish his destiny
+for well or ill,--a Jago rat. To do his devilmost. But to avoid Father
+Sturt.
+
+Out he went into Shoreditch High Street, and there he prowled the
+evening away; there and in Norton Folgate. But he touched for
+nothing--nothing at all. He feared lest his week's honesty had damaged
+his training. Even an apple on a stall he failed at, and had to run. And
+then he turned into Bethnal Green Road.
+
+But here a thought checked him suddenly. What of Mr Grinder? He had
+threatened to have Dicky locked up if he came near the shop again. But a
+child of the Jago knew too much to be frightened by such a threat as
+that. He went on. He felt interested to see how his late employer was
+getting along without him, and who was minding the goods outside the
+shop. Probably there was nobody: and this gave Dicky an idea.
+
+He had forgotten his smudgy apron, folded and tucked away in the lining
+of his jacket. Now he pulled it out, and fastened it before him once
+more. He knew Mr Grinder's habits in the shop, and if he could seize a
+fitting opportunity he might be able, attired in his apron, to pick up
+or reach down any article that struck his fancy, fearless of
+interference from passers-by; for he would seem to be still shop-boy.
+
+With that he hastened, for it was near closing time at Grinder's. He
+took the opposite side of the road, the better to observe unseen in the
+darkness. But Mr Grinder had already begun to carry things in from the
+pavement. As Dicky looked he came out with a long pole wherewith he
+unhooked from above a clattering cluster of pails and watering pots, and
+a bunch of doormats. The doormats he let fall on the flags, while he
+carried in the pots and pails. Dicky knew that these pots and pails were
+kept at night in a shed behind the house; so he scuttled across the
+road, opening the blade of his old knife as he ran. He cut the string
+that held the mats together, selected a thick one, rolled it under his
+arm, and edged off into the shadow. Then he ran quietly across to the
+nearest turning.
+
+Presently Mr Grinder came out, hooked his finger in the string among the
+mats, and pulled up nothing. He stooped, and saw that the string was
+cut. He looked about him suspiciously, flung the mats over, and counted
+them. Then he stood erect; stared up the street, down the street, and
+across the road, with his mouth open; and made short rushes left and
+right into the gloom. Then he returned to the mats and scratched his
+head. Finally, he gave another glance about the street, picked up the
+mats in his arms and carried them in, counting them as he went. And, the
+mats bestowed, whenever he came forth for a fresh armful of saucepans,
+he stood and gazed doubtfully, now this way, now that, about the Bethnal
+Green Road.
+
+Mr Aaron Weech was pushing his last shutter into its place when 'Clean
+the knives,' said Dicky Perrott, in perfunctory repetition of the old
+formula.
+
+Mr Weech seemed taken aback. 'Wot, that?' he asked, doubtfully, pointing
+at the doormat. Then, after a sharp look about the almost deserted
+street, he ran to Jago Row corner, twenty yards away, and looked down
+there. Nobody was hiding, and he came back. He led the way into the
+shop, and closed the door. Then, looking keenly in Dicky's face, he
+suddenly asked,--''Oo toldjer to bring that 'ere?'
+
+'Told me?' Dicky answered sullenly. 'Nobody told me. Don'cher want it?'
+
+''Ow much did 'e tell ye t'ask for it?'
+
+'Tell me? 'Oo?'
+
+'_You_ know. 'Ow much didjer say 'e said?'
+
+Dicky was mystified. 'Dunno wotcher mean,' he replied.
+
+Mr Weech suddenly broke into a loud laugh, but kept his keen look on the
+boy's face nevertheless. 'Ah, it's a good joke, Dicky, ain't it?' he
+said, and laughed again. 'But you can't 'ave me, ye know! Mr Grinder's a
+old friend o' mine, an' I know 'is little larks. Wot did 'e tell ye to
+do if I wouldn't 'ave that doormat?'
+
+'Tell me?' asked Dicky, plainly more mystified than ever. 'Wy 'e never
+told me nothink. 'E gimme the sack this afternoon, an' chucked me out.'
+
+'Then wotcher got yer apron on now for?'
+
+'Oh,' said Dicky, looking down at it, 'I jist put it on agin--o'
+purpose.' And he glanced at the mat.
+
+Mr Weech understood, and grinned--a genuine grin this time. 'That's
+right Dicky,' he said, 'never let yer wits go a-ramblin'. A sharp boy
+like you's a lot too good for a shop-boy, slavin' away from mornin' till
+night, an' treated ungrateful. Wot did 'e sack ye for?'
+
+'I dunno. Took a fit in 'is 'ead, I s'pose. Wotcher goin' to gimme for
+this mat? It's a two an' three mat.'
+
+'Want somethink to eat, doncher?' suggested Mr Weech, glancing at a heap
+of stale cake.
+
+'No I don't,' Dicky answered, with sulky resolution. 'I want money.'
+
+'Awright,' said Mr Weech, resignedly. 'You ain't 'ad much to eat an'
+drink 'ere for a long time, though. But I'll do the 'an'some, seein'
+you're bin treated ungrateful by Grinder. 'Ere's twopence.'
+
+But Dicky held to the mat. 'Twopence ain't enough,' he said. 'I want
+fourpence.' He meant to spare nobody--not even Mr Weech.
+
+'Wot? Fourpence?' gasped Mr Weech indignantly. 'Wy, you're mad. Take it
+away.'
+
+Dicky rolled the mat under his arm and turned to the door.
+
+''Ere,' said Mr Weech, seeing him going, 'I'll make it thrippence,
+seein' you're bin treated so bad. Thrippence--_and_ a slice o' cake,' he
+added, perceiving that Dicky did not hesitate.
+
+'I don't want no cake,' Dicky answered doggedly. 'I want fourpence, an'
+I won't take no less.'
+
+The good Weech was unwilling that Dicky should find another market after
+all, so he submitted to the extortion. 'Ah well,' he said, with a sigh,
+pulling out the extra coppers, 'jist for this once, then. You'll ave to
+make it up next time. Mindjer, it's on'y 'cos I'm sorry for ye bein'
+treated ungrateful. Don't _you_ go an' treat _me_ ungrateful, now.'
+
+Dicky pocketed his pence and made for home, while Mr Weech, chuckling
+gently at his morning prophecy of a doormat for fourpence, carried the
+plunder to the room reserved for new and unused stock; promising
+himself, however, a peep at Grinder's shop in the morning, to make quite
+sure that Dicky had really left.
+
+So ended Dicky's dealings with the house of Grinder. When Father Sturt
+next saw the oil-man, and inquired of Dicky's progress, he was met with
+solemn congratulations that no larcenies were to pay for. Mr Grinder's
+sagacity, it seemed, had enabled him to detect and crush at the outset
+Dicky's plans for selling stock wholesale on his own account. Out of
+consideration for the vicar's recommendation he had refrained from
+handing the boy over to the police, but had paid him a week in advance
+and dismissed him. Father Sturt insisted on repaying the money, and
+went his way with a heavy heart. For if this were what came of the
+promising among his flock, what of the others? For some while he saw
+nothing of Dicky; and the incident fell back among a crowd of others in
+his remembrance: for Dicky was but one among thousands, and the
+disappointment was but one of many hundreds.
+
+Lying awake that night, but with closed eyes, Dicky heard his mother,
+talking with his father, suggest that perhaps an enemy had earwigged
+Grinder, and told him a tale that had brought about Dicky's dismissal:
+somebody, perhaps, who wanted the situation for somebody else. Josh
+Perrott did no more than grunt at the guess, but it gave a new light to
+Dicky. Clearly that would account for Grinder's change. But who could
+the mischief-maker be?
+
+The little clock on the mantel-piece ticked away busily in the silence,
+and Dicky instantly thought of the hunchback. He it must have been,
+without a doubt. Who else? Was he not hanging about the shop, staring
+and sneering, but a day or two back? And was it not he who had pursued
+him with malice on every occasion, in school and out? Had not Bobby
+Roper this very trick of lying tales? Where was the gratuitous injury in
+all these four years that had not been Bobby Roper's work? Dicky
+trembled with rage as he lay, and he resolved on condign revenge. The
+war with Dove Lane was over for the time being, but that made it easier
+for him to catch his enemy.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+The feud between the Jago and Dove Lane was eternal, just as was that
+between the Ranns and the Learys; but, like the Rann and Leary feud, it
+had its paroxysms and its intervals. And, in both cases, the close of a
+paroxysm was signalised by a great show of amity between the factions.
+Bob Rann and Billy Leary would drink affably from the same pot, and
+Norah Walsh and Sally Green would call each other 'mum'; while Jagos and
+Dove-Laners would mingle in bars and lend pinches of tobacco, and call
+each other 'matey.' A paroxysm in the war had now passed, and
+reconciliation was due. The Dove-Laners had been heavily thrashed: their
+benjamins and kicksies had been impounded in Meakin Street, and they had
+ceased from buying. Dove Lane itself had been swept from end to end by
+the victorious Jago, and the populations of both were dotted thickly
+with bandaged heads. This satisfactory state of things achieved, there
+was little reason left for fighting. Moreover, if fighting persisted too
+long at a time, the police were apt to turn up in numbers, subjecting
+the neighbourhood to much inconvenient scrutiny, and very often coming
+across Jagos--or even Dove-Laners--'wanted' on old accounts. So peace
+was declared; and, as a visible sign thereof, it was determined that the
+Dove-Laners should visit the Jago in a body, there to join in a
+sing-song at Mother Gapp's. Mother Gapp's was chosen, not only because
+it _was_ Mother Gapp's--an important consideration--but also because of
+the large room behind the bar, called the 'club-room,' which had long
+ago been made of two rooms and a big cupboard, by the cutting away of
+crazy partitions from the crazy walls.
+
+Scarce was it dark when the Dove-Laners, in a succession of hilarious
+groups--but withal a trifle suspicious--began to push through Mother
+Gapp's doors. Their caps pulled down to their ears, their hands in their
+pockets, their shoulders humped, and their jackets buttoned tight, they
+lurched through the Jago, grinning with uneasy affability at the
+greetings that met them, being less practised than the Jagos in the
+assumption of elaborate cordiality.
+
+In the club-room of the Feathers there were but three or four of the
+other party, though the bar was packed. The three or four, of whom Josh
+Perrott was one, were by way of a committee of stewards deputed to bid
+the Dove-Laners welcome, and to help them to seats. The Jagos were in
+some sort in the situation of hosts, and it had been decided after
+debate that it would ill become them to take their places till their
+guests were seated. The punctilio of the Jago on such occasions was a
+marvel ever.
+
+So Josh Perrott stood at one side of the club-room door and Billy Leary
+at the other, shaking hands with all who entered, and strenuously
+maintaining cheerful grins. Now the Jago smile was a smile by itself,
+unlike the smiles in other places. It faded suddenly, and left the
+face--the Jago face--drawn and sad and startling by contrast, as of a
+man betrayed into mirth in the midst of great sorrow. So that a
+persistent grin was known for a work of conscious effort.
+
+The Dove-Laners came in still larger numbers than had been expected, and
+before long it was perceived that there would be little space in the
+club-room, if any at all, for the Jagos. Already the visitors seemed to
+fill the place, but they still kept coming, and found places by
+squeezing. There was some doubt as to what had best be done. Meanwhile
+the sing-song began, for at least a score were anxious to 'oblige' at
+once, and every moment fresh volunteers arose. Many Dove-Laners stood
+up, and so made more room; but more came, and still more, till the
+club-room could hold not another, and the very walls were like to burst.
+Under the low ceiling hung a layer of smoke that obscured the face of
+the man standing on the table at the end to sing; and under the smoke
+was a close-packed array of heads, hats, and clay pipes, much
+diversified by white bandages and black eyes.
+
+Such Dove-Laners as came in now were fain to find places in the bar, if
+they could; and a crowd of Jagos, men and women, hung about the doors of
+the Feathers. More fortunate than other boys, Dicky, who would go
+anywhere to hear what purported to be music, had succeeded in worming
+himself through the bar and almost to the door of the club-room; but he
+could get no farther, and now he stood compressed, bounded on the face
+by Cocko Harnwell's coat-tails, and on the back of the head by Fluffy
+Pike's moleskin waistcoat, with pearlies down the front and the artful
+dodge over the pockets. Pud Palmer--one of the reception committee--was
+singing. He accompanied his chorus by a step dance, and all the company
+stamped in sympathy:--
+
+    '_She's a fighter, she's a biter, she's a swearer, she's a tearer,
+      The gonophs down aar alley they calls 'er Rorty Sal;
+    But as I'm a pertikiler sort o' bloke, I calls 'er Rorty Sairer,
+      I'm goin'_--'
+
+Crack!--CRASH!
+
+Dicky clung to Cocko Harnwell's coat-tails lest he were trampled to
+death; and for a while he was flung about, crushed and bruised, among
+rushing men, like a swimmer among breakers, while the air was rent with
+howls and the smash of glass. For the club-room floor had given way.
+
+It had been built but slightly in the beginning, as floor for two small
+rooms and a cupboard, with little weight to carry. Old and rotten now,
+and put to the strain of a multitude, stamping in unison, it had failed
+utterly, and had let down a struggling mob of men five feet on the
+barrels in the cellar, panic-stricken and jumbled with tables, pots,
+wooden forms, lighted pipes and splintered joinery.
+
+From the midst of the stramash a Dove-Laner bawled aloud that it was a
+trap, and instantly Jagos and Dove-Laners were at each others' throats,
+and it was like to go hard with the few Jagos among the ruins. Billy
+Leary laid about him desperately with a ragged piece of flooring, while
+Josh Perrott and Pud Palmer battered Dove-Laners with quart pots. Then
+it was shouted without that the Dove-Laners were exterminating the
+Jagos within, and a torrent of Jagos burst through the doors, poured
+through the bar, and over the club-room threshold into the confusion
+below.
+
+Dicky, bruised, frightened and flung like a rag this way and that, at
+last made shift to grasp a post, and climb up on the bar counter. Mother
+Gapp, a dishevelled maniac, was dancing amid pots and broken glass,
+black in the face, screaming inaudibly. Dicky stumbled along the
+counter, climbed over the broken end of a partition, and fell into the
+arms of Kiddo Cook, coming in with the rush. 'Put the boy out!' yelled
+Kiddo, turning and heaving him over the heads behind him. Somebody
+caught Dicky by a leg and an arm, his head hit the door post, the world
+turned a double-somersault about him, and he came down with a crash. He
+was on the flags of Old Jago Street, with all his breath driven out of
+him.
+
+But he was quickly on his feet again. A crowd beat against the front of
+Mother Gapp's, and reinforcements came running from everywhere, with the
+familiar rallying-cry, 'Jago! Jago 'old tight!' Dove Lane had abused
+the Jago hospitality; woe to the Dove-Laners!
+
+There were scuffles here and there, where Dove-Laners, who had never
+reached the club-room, or who had been crowded out of it, made for
+escape. Dicky was shaken and sore, but he pulled himself together
+resolutely. He had seen a few Dove Lane boys about before he had got
+into the Feathers, and plainly it was his duty to find them and bash
+them. Moreover, he wondered what had become of his father. He hastened
+through the dark passage of the house next to Mother Gapp's, into the
+back yard, and through the broken fence. There was a door in the
+club-room wall, and through this he thought to see what was going
+forward.
+
+The cellar--at any rate, at the farther end--was a pit of writhing
+forms, and the din rose loud as ever. A short figure stood black against
+the light, and held by the door-post, looking down at the riot. Dicky
+knew it. He sprang at Bobby Roper, pulled him by the arm, and struck at
+him furiously. The hunchback, whimpering, did his best to retaliate and
+to get away; but Dicky, raging at the remembrance of his fancied
+injury, struck savagely, and struck again, till Bobby Roper tripped
+backward over the projecting end of a broken floor-board, and pitched
+headlong into the cellar. He struck a barrel and rolled over, falling
+into the space between that and two other barrels. Dicky looked, but the
+hunchback did not move. Then some of the Dove-Laners flung pots at the
+lamps hanging against the club-room walls. Soon they were smashed and
+fell, and there was a darkness; and under cover thereof the aliens
+essayed flight.
+
+Dicky was a little frightened at what he had done, but he felt that with
+Bobby Roper anything was justifiable. Some Dove-Laners escaped by the
+back door--the cellar was low, and there was not five feet between the
+barrels and the broken joists--and these Dicky avoided by getting back
+through the fence. In the end, most of the enemy struggled away by one
+means or another, and when lights were brought at last the Jagos were
+found pummelling each other savagely in the gloom.
+
+Father Sturt, apprised of something uncommon by the exodus of members
+from the club, finally locked the doors and came to investigate. He
+arrived as the Jagos were extricating themselves from the cellar, and it
+was he who lifted the little hunchback from among the barrels and
+carried him into the open air; he also who carried him home. No bone was
+broken, and no joint was disturbed, but there was a serious shock, many
+contusions, and a cut on the scalp. So said the surgeon whom Father
+Sturt took with him to Dove Lane. And Bobby Roper lay a fortnight in
+bed.
+
+More plaster than ever embellished the heads of Dove Lane and the Jago
+that night; but for the Jagos there was compensation. For down among the
+barrels lay many a packet of tobacco, many a pair of boots, and many a
+corner stuffed with mixed property of other sorts: which Mother Gapp had
+fenced for many a month back. So that it happened to more than one
+warrior to carry home again something with which he had run between the
+'Posties' long before, and had sold to Mother Gapp for what she would
+give.
+
+The ground floor of the Feathers stood a battered shell. The damage of
+four years ago was inconsiderable compared to this. With tears and
+blasphemy Mother Gapp invaded the hoard of her long iniquity to buy a
+new floor; but it was the larceny--the taking of the tobacco and the
+boots, and the many other things from among the barrels--that cut her to
+the soul. A crool--a crool thing was such robbery--sheer robbery, said
+Mother Gapp.
+
+Josh Perrott got a bad sprain in the cellar and had to be helped home.
+More, he took with him not a single piece of plunder, such was his
+painful disablement.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+For more than a week Josh Perrott could not walk about. And it was a bad
+week. For some little while his luck had been but poor, and now he found
+himself laid up with a total reserve fund of fourteenpence. A coat was
+pawned with old Poll Rann (who kept a leaving shop in a first floor back
+in Jago Row) for ninepence. Then Josh swore at Dicky for not being still
+at Grinder's, and told him to turn out and bring home some money. Dicky
+had risen almost too sore and stiff to stand, on the morning after the
+fight at the Feathers, and he was little better now. But he had to go,
+and he went, though he well knew that a click was out of the question,
+for his joints almost refused to bend. But he found that the fat's
+a-running boys were contemplating business, and he scouted for them
+with such success as to bring home sevenpence in the evening. Then Kiddo
+Cook, who had left Mother Gapp's with a double armful on the night of
+the sing-song, found himself rich enough, being a bachelor, to lend Josh
+eighteenpence. And a shawl of Hannah Perrott's was pawned. That, though,
+was redeemed the next day, together with the coat. For Dicky brought
+home a golden sovereign.
+
+It had been an easy click--scarce a click at all, perhaps, strictly
+speaking. Dicky had tramped into the city, and had found a crowd outside
+St Paul's--a well-dressed crowd, not being moved on: for something was
+going forward in the cathedral. He recognised one of the High Mob, a
+pogue-hunter--that is a pickpocket who deals in purses. Dicky watched
+this man's movements, by way of education; for he was an eminent
+practitioner, and worked alone, with no assistant to cover him. Dicky
+saw him in the thick of the crowd, standing beside and behind one lady
+after another; but it was only when his elbow bent to slip something
+into his own pocket that Dicky knew he had 'touched.' Presently he
+moved to another part of the crowd, where mostly men were standing, and
+there he stealthily let drop a crumpled newspaper, and straightway left
+the crowd. He had 'worked' it as much as he judged safe. Dicky wriggled
+toward the crumpled paper, slipped it under his jacket, and cleared away
+also. He knew that there was something in the paper beside news: that,
+in fact, there were purses in it--purses emptied and shed as soon as
+might be, because nobody can swear to money, but strange purses lead to
+destruction. Dicky recked little of this danger, but made his best pace
+to a recess in a back street, there to examine his pogues; for though
+the uxter was gone from them, they might yet bring a few coppers from Mr
+Weech, if they were of good quality. They were a fairly sound lot. One
+had a large clasp that looked like silver, and another was quite new,
+and Dicky was observing with satisfaction the shop-shininess of the
+lining, when he perceived a cunning pocket at the back, lying flat
+against the main integument--and in it was a sovereign! He gulped at the
+sight. Clearly the pogue-hunter, emptying the pogues in his pocket by
+sense of touch, had missed the flat pocket. Dicky was not yet able to
+run with freedom, but he never ceased from trotting till he reached his
+own staircase in Old Jago Street. And so the eight or nine days passed,
+and Josh went out into the Jago with no more than a tenderness about his
+ankle.
+
+Now, he much desired a good click; so he went across High Street
+Shoreditch, to Kingsland Railway Station and bought a ticket for
+Canonbury.
+
+Luck was against him, it was plain. He tramped the northern suburbs from
+three o'clock till dark, but touched for nothing. He spent money,
+indeed, for he feared to overwork his ankle, and for that reason rested
+in divers public-houses. He peeped in at the gates of quiet gardens, in
+the hope of garden-hose left unwatched, or tennis-rackets lying in a
+handy summer-house. But he saw none. He pried about the doors of private
+stable-yards, in case of absent grooms and unprotected bunches of
+harness; but in vain. He inspected quiet areas and kitchen entrances in
+search of unguarded spoons--even descended into one area, where he had
+to make an awkward excuse about buying old bottles, in consequence of
+meeting the cook at the door. He tramped one quiet road after another on
+the look out for a dead 'un--a house furnished, but untenanted. But
+there was never a dead 'un, it seemed, in all the northern district. So
+he grew tired and short-tempered, and cursed himself for that he had not
+driven off with a baker's horse and cart that had tempted him early in
+the afternoon.
+
+It grew twilight, and then dark. Josh sat in a public-house, and took a
+long rest and some bread and cheese. It would never do to go home
+without touching, and for some time he considered possibilities with
+regard to a handful of silver money, kept in a glass on a shelf behind
+the bar. But it was out of reach, and there were too many people in the
+place for any attempt by climbing on the counter. Josh grew savage and
+soured. Plastering itself was not such troublesome work; and at least
+the pay was certain. It was little short of ten o'clock when he left
+the public-house and turned back toward Canonbury. He would have
+_something_ on the way, he resolved, and he would catch the first train
+home. He would have to knock somebody over in a dark street, that was
+all. It was nothing new, but he would rather have made his click another
+way this time, because his tender ankle might keep him slow, or even
+give way altogether; and to be caught in a robbery with violence might
+easily mean something more than mere imprisonment; it might mean a dose
+of the 'cat': and the cat was a thing the thought or the mention whereof
+sent shudders through the Old Jago.
+
+But no: nobody worth knocking down came his way. Truly luck was out
+to-night. There was a spot by the long garden wall of a corner house
+that would have suited admirably, and as Josh lingered there, and looked
+about him, his eye fell on a ladder, reared nearly upright against the
+back wall of that same corner house, and lashed at the roof. It passed
+by the side of the second floor window, whereof the top sash was a
+little open. That would do. It was not his usual line of work, but it
+looked very promising.
+
+He stuck his stick under his waistcoat by way of the collar, and climbed
+the wall with gingerly care, giving his sound foot all the hard work.
+The ladder offered no difficulty, but the bottom sash of the window was
+stiff, and he cracked a pane of glass in pushing at the frame with his
+stick. The sash lifted, however, in the end, and he climbed into the
+dark room, being much impeded by the dressing-table. All was quiet in
+the house, and the ticking of a watch on the dressing-table was distinct
+in the ear. Josh felt for it and found it, with a chain hanging from the
+bow.
+
+The house was uncommonly quiet. Could it possibly be a dead 'un after
+all? Josh felt that he ought to have inspected the front windows before
+climbing the wall, but the excitement of the long-delayed chance had
+ruined his discretion. At any rate he would reconnoitre. The door was
+ajar and the landing was dark.
+
+Down in the drawing-room a gross, pimply man, in shirt-sleeves and
+socks, sat up on the sofa at the sound of an opened window higher in
+the house. He took a drink from the glass by his side, and listened.
+Then he rose and went softly upstairs.
+
+Josh Perrott came out on the landing. It was a long landing, with a
+staircase at the end, illuminated from somewhere below: so that it was
+not a case of a dead 'un after all. He tip-toed along to take a look
+down the stairs, nevertheless. Then he was conscious of a loud
+breathing, as of an over-gorged cow, and up behind the stair-rails rose
+a fat head, followed by a fat trunk, between white shirt-sleeves.
+
+Josh sank into the shadow. The man had no light, but discover him he
+must, sooner or later, for the landing was narrow. Better sooner, and
+suddenly. As the man's foot was on the topmost stair, Josh sprang at him
+with a straight left-hander that took him on the broad chin, and sent
+him downstairs in a heap, with a crash and a roar. Josh darted back to
+the room he had just left, scrambled through the window, and slid down
+the ladder, as he had slid down many another when he was a plasterer's
+boy. He checked himself short of the bottom, sprang at the wall-coping,
+flung himself over, and ran up the dark by-street, with the sound of
+muffled roars and screams faint in his ears.
+
+He ran a street or two, taking every corner as he came to it, and then
+fell into a walk. In his flight he had not spared his ankle, and now it
+was painful. Moreover, he had left his stick behind him, in the bedroom.
+But he was in Highbury, and Canonbury Road Station was less than half a
+mile away. He grinned silently as he went, for there was something in
+the aspect of the overfed householder, and in the manner of his
+downfall, that gave the adventure a comic flavour. He took a peep at his
+spoil as he passed under a street lamp, for all watches and chains are
+the same in the dark, and the thing might be a mere Waterbury on a steel
+guard. But no: both were gold, and heavy: a red clock and slang if ever
+there was one. And so Josh Perrott hobbled and chuckled his way home.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+But indeed Josh Perrott's luck was worse than he thought. For the gross,
+pimply man was a High Mobsman--so very high a mobsman that it would have
+been slander and libel, and a very great expense, to write him down a
+mobsman at all. He paid a rent of a hundred and twenty pounds a year,
+and heavy rates, and put half-a-crown into the plate at a very
+respectable chapel every Sunday. He was, in fact, the King of High
+Mobsmen, spoken of among them as the Mogul. He did no vulgar thievery:
+he never screwed a chat, nor claimed a peter, nor worked the mace. He
+sat easily at home, and financed (sometimes planned) promising
+speculations: a large swindle requiring much ground-baiting and
+preliminary outlay; or a robbery of specie from a mail train; or a bank
+fraud needing organization and funds. When the results of such
+speculations consisted of money he took the lion's share. When they were
+expressed in terms of imprisonment they fell to active and intelligent
+subordinates. So that for years the Mogul had lived an affluent and a
+blameless life, far removed from the necessity of injudicious bodily
+exercise, and characterised by every indulgence consistent with a proper
+suburban respectability. He had patronised, snubbed, or encouraged High
+Mobsmen of more temerarious habit, had profited by their exploits, and
+had read of their convictions and sentences with placid interest in the
+morning papers. And after all this, to be robbed in his own house and
+knocked downstairs by a casual buster was an outrage that afflicted the
+Mogul with wrath infuriate. Because that was a sort of trouble that had
+never seemed a possibility, to a person of his eminence: and because the
+angriest victim of dishonesty is a thief.
+
+However, the burglar had got clean away, that was plain; and he had
+taken the best watch and chain in the house, with the Mogul's initials
+on the back. So that respectable sufferer sent for the police, and gave
+his attention to the the alleviation of bumps and the washing away of
+blood. In his bodily condition a light blow was enough to let a great
+deal of blood--no doubt with benefit; and Josh Perrott's blows were not
+light in any case.
+
+So it came to pass that not only were the police on the look-out for a
+man with a large gold watch with the Mogul's monogram on the back; but
+also the word was passed as by telegraph through underground channels,
+till every fence in London was warned that the watch was the Mogul's;
+and ere noon next day there was not one but would as lief have put a
+scorpion in his pocket as that same toy and tackle that Josh Perrott was
+gloating over in his back room in Old Jago Street.
+
+As for Josh, his ankle was bad in the morning, and swelled. He dabbed at
+it perseveringly with wet rags, and rubbed it vigorously, so that by one
+o'clock he was able to lace up his boot and go out. He was anxious to
+fence his plunder without delay, and he made his way to Hoxton. The
+watch seemed to be something especially good, and he determined to stand
+out for a price well above the usual figure. For the swag of common
+thieves commanded no such prices as did that of the High Mob. All of it
+was bought and sold on the simple system first called into being seventy
+years back and more by the prince of fences, Ikey Solomons. A breast-pin
+brought a fixed sum, good or bad, and a roll of cloth brought the fixed
+price of a roll of cloth, regardless of quality. Thus a silver watch
+fetched six shillings, never more and never less; a gold watch was worth
+twice as much; an uncommonly good one--a rich man's watch--would bring
+as much as eighteen shillings, if the thief were judge enough of its
+quality to venture the demand. And as it commonly took three men to
+secure a single watch in the open street--one to 'front,' one to snatch,
+and a third to take from the snatcher--the gains of the toy-getting
+trade were poor, except to the fence. This time Josh resolved to put
+pressure on the fence, and to do his best to get something as near a
+sovereign as might be. And as to the chain, so thick and heavy, he would
+fight his best for the privilege of sale by weight. Thus turning the
+thing in his mind, he entered the familiar doorway of the old clothes
+shop.
+
+'Vot is id?' asked the fence, holding out his hand with the customary
+air of contempt for what was coming, by way of discounting it in
+advance. This particular fence, by-the-bye, never bought anything
+himself. He inspected whatever was brought on behalf of an occult
+friend; and the transaction was completed by a shabby third party in an
+adjoining court. But he had an amazingly keen regard for his friend's
+interests.
+
+Josh put the watch into the extended hand. The fence lifted it to his
+face, turned it over, and started. He looked hard at Josh, and then
+again at the watch, and handed it hastily back, holding it gingerly by
+the bow. 'Don' vant _dot_,' he said; 'nod me--nod 'im, I mean. No, no.'
+He turned away, shaking his hand as though to throw off contamination.
+'Take id avay.'
+
+'Wot's the matter?' Josh demanded, astonished. 'Is it 'cos o' the
+letters on the back? You can easy send it to church, can't ye?'
+
+A watch is 'sent to church' when it is put into another case. But the
+fence waved away the suggestion. 'Take id avay I tell you,' he said.
+'I--'e von't 'ave nodden to do vid id.'
+
+'Wot's the matter with the chain, then?' asked Josh. But the fence
+walked away to the back of the shop, wagging his hands desperately, like
+a wet man seeking a towel, and repeating only:--'Nodden to do vid
+id--take id avay--nodden to do vid id.'
+
+Josh stuffed his prize back into his pocket, and regained the street. He
+was confounded. What was wrong with Cohen? Did he suspect a police trick
+to entrap him? Josh snorted with indignation at the thought. He was no
+nark! But perhaps the police were showing a pressing interest in Cohen's
+business concerns just now, and he had suspended fencing for a while.
+The guess was a lame one, but he could think of none better at the
+moment, as he pushed his way to the Jago. He would try Mother Gapp.
+
+Mother Gapp would not even take the watch in her hands; her eyes were
+good enough at that distance. 'Lor', Josh Perrott,' she said, 'wot 'a'
+ye bin up to now? Want to git me lagged now, do ye? Ain't satisfied with
+breakin' up the 'ouse an' ruinin' a pore widder that way, ain't ye? You
+git out, go on. I 'ad 'nough o' you!'
+
+It was very extraordinary. Was there a general reclamation of fences?
+But there were men at work at the Feathers, putting down boards and
+restoring partitions; and two of them had been 'gone over' ruinously on
+their way to work, and now they came and went with four policemen.
+Possibly Mother Gapp feared the observation of carpenters. Be it as it
+might, there was nothing for it now but Weech's.
+
+Mr Weech was charmed. 'Dear me, it's a wonderful fine watch, Mr
+Perrott--a wonderful fine watch. An' a beautiful chain.' But he was
+looking narrowly at the big monogram as he said it. 'It's reely a
+wonderful article. 'Ow they do git 'em up, to be sure! Cost a lot o'
+money too, I'll be bound. Might you be thinkin' o' sellin' it?'
+
+'Yus o' course,' replied Josh. 'That's wot I brought it for.'
+
+'Ah, it's a lovely watch, Mr Perrott--a lov-erly watch; an' the chain
+matches it. But you mustn't be too 'ard on me. Shall we say four pound
+for the little lot?'
+
+It was more than double Josh's wildest hopes, but he wanted all he could
+get. 'Five,' he said doggedly.
+
+Weech gazed at him with tender rebuke. 'Five pound's a awful lot o'
+money, Mr Perrott,' he said. 'You're too 'ard on me, reely. I 'ardly
+know 'ow I can scrape it up. But it's a beautiful little lot, an' I
+won't 'aggle. But I ain't got all that money in the 'ouse now. I never
+keep so much money in the 'ouse--sich a neighb'r'ood, Mr Perrott! Bring
+it round to-morrer mornin' at eleven.'
+
+'Awright, I'll come. Five quid, mind.'
+
+'Ah yus,' answered Mr Weech, with a reproving smile. 'It's reely more
+than I ought!'
+
+Josh was jubilant, and forgot his sore ankle. He had never handled such
+a sum as five pounds since his fight with Billy Leary, years ago; when,
+indeed, he had stooped to folly in the shape of lavish treating, and so
+had not enjoyed the handling of the full amount.
+
+Mr Weech, also, was pleased. For it was a great stroke of business to
+oblige so distinguished a person as the Mogul. There was no telling what
+advantages it might not lead to in the way of trade.
+
+That night the Perrotts had a hot supper, brought from Walker's
+cook-shop in paper. And at eleven the next morning Josh, twenty yards
+from Mr Weech's door, with the watch and chain in his pocket, was tapped
+on the arm by a constable in plain clothes, while another came up on the
+other side. 'Mornin', Perrott,' said the first constable, cheerily.
+'We've got a little business with you at the station.'
+
+'Me? Wot for?'
+
+'Oh well, come along; p'raps it ain't anything--unless there's a gold
+watch an' chain on you, from Highbury. It's just a turnin' over.'
+
+'Awright,' replied Josh, resignedly. 'It's a fair cop. I'll go quiet.'
+
+'That's right, Perrott; it ain't no good playin' the fool, you know.'
+They were moving along; and as they came by Weech's shop, a whiskered
+face, with a patch of shining scalp over it, peeped from behind a
+curtain that hung at the rear of the bloaters and plumcake in the
+window. As he saw it, Josh ducked suddenly, wrenching his arm free, and
+dashed over the threshold. Mr Weech, whiskers and apron flying, galloped
+through the door at the back, and the constables sprang upon Josh
+instantly and dragged him into the street. 'Wotcher mean?' cried the one
+who knew him, indignantly, and with a significant glance at the other.
+'Call that goin' quiet?'
+
+Josh's face was white and staring with rage. 'Awright,' he grunted
+through his shut teeth, after a pause. 'I'll go quiet now. I ain't got
+nothin' agin _you_.'
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Dicky's morning theft that day had been but a small one--he had run off
+with a new two-foot rule that a cabinet-maker had carelessly left on an
+unfinished office table at his shop door in Curtain Road. It was not
+much, but it might fetch some sort of a dinner at Weech's, which would
+be better than going home, and, perhaps, finding nothing. So about noon,
+all ignorant of his father's misfortune, he came by way of Holywell Lane
+and Bethnal Green Road to Meakin Street.
+
+Mr Weech looked at him rather oddly, Dicky fancied, when he came in, but
+he took the two-foot rule with alacrity, and brought Dicky a rasher of
+bacon, and a slice of cake afterward. This seemed very generous. More:
+Mr Weech's manner was uncommonly amiable, and when the meal was over, of
+his own motion, he handed over a supplementary penny. Dicky was
+surprised; but he had no objection, and he thought little more about it.
+
+As soon as he appeared in Luck Row he was told that his father had been
+'smugged.' Indeed the tidings had filled the Jago within ten minutes.
+Josh Perrott was walking quietly along Meakin Street,--so went the
+news,--when up comes Snuffy and another split, and smugs him. Josh had a
+go for Weech's door, to cut his lucky out at the back, but was caught.
+That was a smart notion of Josh's, the Jago opinion ran, to get through
+Weech's and out into the courts behind. But it was no go.
+
+Hannah Perrott sat in her room, inert and lamenting. Dicky could not
+rouse her, and at last he went off by himself to reconnoitre about
+Commercial Street Police Station, and pick up what information he might;
+while a gossip or two came and took Mrs Perrott for consolation to
+Mother Gapp's. Little Em, unwashed, tangled and weeping, could well take
+care of herself and the room, being more than two years old.
+
+Josh Perrott would be brought up to-morrow, Dicky ascertained, at the
+North London Police Court. So the next morning found Dicky trudging
+moodily along the two miles of flags to Stoke Newington Road; while his
+mother and three sympathising friends, who foresaw an opportunity for
+numerous tiny drops with interesting circumstances to flavour them, took
+a penny cast on the way in a tramcar.
+
+Dicky, with some doubt as to the disposition of the door-keeping
+policeman toward ragged boys, waited for the four women, and contrived
+to pass in unobserved among them. Several Jagos were in the court,
+interested not only in Josh's adventure, but in one of Cocko Harnwell's,
+who had indulged, the night before, in an animated little scramble with
+three policemen in Dalston; and they waited with sympathetic interest
+while the luck was settled of a long string of drunk-and-disorderlies.
+
+At last Josh was brought in, and lurched composedly into the dock, in
+the manner of one who knew the routine. The police gave evidence of
+arrest, in consequence of information received, and of finding the
+watch and chain in Josh's trousers pocket. The prosecutor, with his head
+conspicuously bedight with sticking-plaster, puffed and grunted up into
+the witness-box, kissed the book, and was a 'retired commission agent.'
+He positively identified the watch and chain, and he not less positively
+identified Josh Perrott, whom he had picked out from a score of men in
+the police-yard. This would have been a feat indeed for a man who had
+never seen Josh, and had only once encountered his fist in the dark, had
+it not been for the dutiful though private aid of Mr Weech: who, in
+giving his information had described Josh and his one suit of clothes
+with great fidelity, especially indicating a scar on the right
+cheek-bone which would mark him among a thousand. The retired commission
+agent was quite sure of the prisoner. He had met him on the stairs,
+where there was plenty of light from a lamp, and the prisoner had
+attacked him savagely, beating him about the head and flinging him
+downstairs. The policeman called by the prosecutor's servant deposed to
+finding the prosecutor bruised and bleeding. There was a ladder against
+the back of the house; a bedroom window had been opened; there were
+muddy marks on the sill; and he had found the stick--produced--lying in
+the bedroom.
+
+Josh leaned easily on the rail before him while evidence was being
+given, and said 'No, yer worship,' whenever he was asked if he desired
+to question a witness. He knew better than to run the risk of
+incriminating himself by challenging the prosecutor's well-coloured
+evidence; and, as it was a certain case of committal for trial, it would
+have been useless in any event. He made the same reply when he was asked
+if he had anything to say before being committed: and straightway was
+'fullied.' He lurched serenely out of the dock, waving his cap at his
+friends in the court, and that was all. The Jagos waited till Cocko
+Harnwell got his three months and then retired to neighbouring
+public-houses; but Dicky remembered his little sister, and hurried home.
+
+The month's session at the Old Bailey had just begun, so that Josh had
+no long stay at Holloway. Among the Jagos it was held to be a most
+creditable circumstance that Josh was to take his trial with full
+honours at the Old Bailey, and not at mere County Sessions at
+Clerkenwell, like a simple lob-crawler or peter-claimer. For Josh's was
+a case of burglary with serious violence, such as was fitting for the
+Old Bailey, and not even a High Mobsman could come to trial with greater
+glory. 'As like as not it's laggin' dues, after 'is other convictions,'
+said Bill Rann. And Jerry Gullen thought so too.
+
+Dicky went, with his mother and Em, to see Josh at Newgate. They stood
+with other visitors, very noisy, before a double iron railing covered
+with wire-netting, at the farther side whereof stood Josh and other
+prisoners, while a screaming hubbub of question and answer filled the
+air. Josh had little to say. He lounged against the farther railing with
+his hands in his pockets, asked what Cocko Harnwell had got, and sent a
+message to Bill Rann. While his wife did little more than look dolefully
+through the wires, and pipe:--'Oh, Josh, wotever shall I do?' at
+intervals, with no particular emotion; while Em pressed her smudgy
+little face against the wires, and stared mightily; and while Dicky felt
+that if he had been younger he would have cried. When time was up, Josh
+waved his hand and slouched off, and his family turned out with the
+rest: little Em carrying into later years a memory of father as a man
+who lived in a cage.
+
+In such a case as this, the Jago would have been for ever disgraced if
+Josh Perrott's pals had neglected to get up a 'break' or subscription to
+pay for his defence. Things were never very flourishing in the Jago. But
+this was the sort of break a Jago could not shirk, lest it were
+remembered against him when his own turn came. So enough was collected
+to brief an exceedingly junior counsel, who did his useless best. But
+the facts were too strong even for the most inexperienced advocate; the
+evidence of the prosecutor was nowhere to be shaken, and the jury found
+a verdict of guilty without leaving the box--indeed, with scarce the
+formality of collecting their heads together over the rails. Then Josh's
+past was most unpleasantly raked up before him. He had been convicted
+of larceny, of assaulting the police, and of robbery with violence.
+There were two sentences of six months' imprisonment recorded against
+him, one of three months, and two of a month. Besides fines. The
+Recorder considered it a very serious offence. Not deterred by the
+punishments he had already received, the prisoner had proceeded to a
+worse crime--burglary; and with violence. It was plain that lenience was
+wasted in such a case, and simple imprisonment was not enough. There
+must be an exemplary sentence. The prisoner must be kept in penal
+servitude for five years.
+
+Lagging dues it was, as Bill Rann had anticipated. That Josh Perrott
+agreed with him was suggested by the fact that from the very beginning
+he described himself as a painter; because a painter in prison is apt to
+be employed at times in painting--a lighter and a more desirable task
+than falls to the lot of his fellows in other trades.
+
+In a room by the court Josh saw his wife, Dicky, and Bill Rann (Josh's
+brother-in-law for the occasion) before his ride to Holloway, his one
+stopping place on the way to Chelmsford Gaol. Little Em had been left
+sprawling in the Jago gutters. This time Hannah Perrott wept in good
+earnest, and Dicky, notwithstanding his thirteen years, blinked very
+hard at the wall before him. The arrangement of Josh's affairs was
+neither a long nor a difficult labour. 'S'pose you'll 'ave to do wot you
+can with rush bags, an' sacks, and match-boxes, an' wot not,' he said to
+his wife, and she assented. Josh nodded:--'An' if you 'ave to go in the
+'ouse,'--he meant the workhouse,--'well, it can't be 'elped. You won't
+be no wuss auf 'n me.'
+
+'Oh, _she'll_ be awright,' said Bill Rann, jerking his thumb cheerfully
+toward the missis. 'Wot about you? Think they'll make it Parkhurst?'
+
+Josh shook his head moodily. Parkhurst being the prison reserved for
+convicts of less robust habit, he had little hope of enjoying its easier
+conditions. Presently he said:--'I bin put away this time--fair put
+away.'
+
+'Wot?' answered Bill, 'narkin' dues is it?'
+
+Josh nodded.
+
+''Oo done it then? 'Oo narked?'
+
+Josh shook his head. 'Never mind,' he said, 'I don't want 'im druv out
+o' the Jago 'fore I come out. I'd be sorry to miss 'im. _I_ know
+'im--that's enough.'
+
+And then time was up. Josh suffered the missis to kiss him, and shook
+hands with Bill Rann. 'Good luck to all you Jagos,' he said. Dicky shook
+hands too, and said 'Good-bye, father!' in a voice of such laboured
+cheerfulness that a grin burst for a moment amid Josh's moody features
+as he was marched away, and so departed for the place--in Jago
+idiom--where the dogs don't bite.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+It was Father Sturt's practice to visit every family in his parish in
+regular order. But small as the parish was--insignificant, indeed, in
+mere area--its population exceeded eight thousand: so that the round was
+one of many months, for visiting was but one among innumerable duties.
+But Josh Perrott's lagging secured his family a special call. Not that
+the circumstances were in any way novel or at all uncommon; nor even
+that the vicar had any hope of being able to help. He was but the one
+man who could swim in a howling sea of human wreckage. In the Jago,
+wives like Hannah Perrott, temporarily widowed by the absence of
+husbands 'in the country,' were to be counted in scores, and most were
+in worse case than she, in the matter of dependent children. Father
+Sturt's house-list revealed the fact that in Old Jago Street alone,
+near seventy of the males were at that moment on ticket-of-leave.
+
+In the Perrott case, indeed, the sufferers were fortunate, as things
+went. Mrs Perrott had but herself and the child of two to keep, for
+Dicky could do something, whether good or bad, for himself. The vicar
+might try to get regular work for Dicky, but it would be a vain toil,
+for he must tell an employer what he knew of Dicky's past and of that
+other situation. He could but give the woman the best counsel at his
+command, and do what he might to quicken any latent spark of energy. So
+he did his best, and that was all. The struggle lay with Hannah Perrott.
+
+She had been left before, and more than once; but then the periods had
+been shorter, and, as a matter of fact, things had fallen out so well
+that scarce more than a meal here and there had had to be missed,
+though, when they came, the meals were apt to be but of crusts. And now
+there was more trouble ahead; for though she began her lonely time with
+but one small child on hand, she knew that ere long there would be two.
+
+Of course, she had worked before; not only when Josh had been 'in' but
+at other times, to add to the family resources. She was a clumsy
+needlewoman: else she might hope to earn some ninepence or a shilling a
+day at making shirts, by keeping well to the needle for sixteen hours
+out of the twenty-four; and from the whole sum there would be no
+deductions, except for needles and cotton, and what the frugal employer
+might choose to subtract for work to which he could devise an objection.
+But, as it was, she must do her best to get some sack-making. They paid
+one and sevenpence a hundred for sacks, and, with speed and long hours,
+she could make a hundred in four days. Rush bag-making would bring even
+more, which would be desirable, considering the three-and-sixpence a
+week for rent: which, with the payments for other rooms, made the rent
+of the crazy den in Old Jago Street about equal, space for space, to
+that of a house in Onslow Square. Then there was a more lucrative
+employment still, but one to be looked for at intervals only: one not
+to be counted on at all, in fact, for it was a prize, and many sought
+after it. This was the making of match-boxes. For making one hundred and
+forty-four outside cases with paper label and sandpaper, and the same
+number of trays to slide into them--a gross of complete boxes, or two
+hundred and eighty-eight pieces in all--one got twopence farthing;
+indeed, for a special size one even got a farthing a gross more; and all
+the wood and the labels and the sandpaper were provided free: so that
+the fortunate operative lost nothing out of the twopence farthing but
+the cost of the paste, and the string for tying up the boxes into
+regularly numbered batches, and the time employed in fetching the work
+and taking it back again. And if seven gross were to be got, and could
+be done in a day--and it was really not very difficult for the skilful
+hand who kept at work long enough--the day's income was one and
+threepence three-farthings, less expenses: still better, that, than the
+shirts. But the work was hard to get. As the public-spirited
+manufacturers complained: people would buy Swedish matches, whereas if
+people would Support Home Industries and buy no matches but theirs, they
+would be able to order many a twopence-farthingsworth of boxes more.
+
+There might be collateral sources of income, but these were doubtful and
+irregular. Probably Dicky would bring in a few coppers now and again.
+Then judicious attendance at churches, chapels and prayer-meetings
+beyond the Jago borders was rewarded by coal-tickets, boots, and the
+like. It was necessary to know just where and when to go and what to
+say, else the sole result might be loss of time. There was a church in
+Bethnal Green, for instance, which it would be foolish to enter before
+the end of the Litany, for then you were in good time to get your
+half-quarter hundredweight of coals; but at other places they might
+object to so late an appearance. Above all, one must know the ropes.
+There were several women in the Jago who made almost a living in this
+way alone. They were experts; they knew every fund, every
+meeting-house, all the comings and goings of the gullible; insomuch that
+they would take black umbrage at any unexpected difficulty in getting
+what they demanded. 'Wy,' one would say, 'I 'ad to pitch sich a bleed'n'
+'oly tale I earned it twice over.' But these were the proficient, and
+proficiency in the trade was an outcome of long experience working on a
+foundation of natural gifts; and Hannah Perrott could never hope to be
+among them.
+
+Turning these things in her mind, she addressed herself to her struggle.
+She managed to get some sacks, but for a week or two she could make
+nothing like twenty-five a day, though Dicky helped. Her fingers got
+raw; but she managed to complete a hundred within the first week. They
+might have been better done, as the employer said when he saw them. But
+she got her full one and sevenpence. She pawned her boots for fourpence,
+and wore two old odd ones of Josh's; and she got twopence on a
+petticoat. Dicky also helped a little; and at the end of a fortnight
+there came a godsend in the shape of material for match-boxes. Mrs
+Perrott was slow with them at first; but Dicky was quick, and even
+little Em began to learn to spread paste.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+Dicky grew slighter and lanker, dark about the eyes, and weaker. He was
+growing longitudinally, and that made his lateral wasting the quicker
+and the more apparent. A furtive frighted look hung ever in his face, a
+fugitive air about his whole person. His mother's long face was longer
+than ever, and blacker under the eyes than Dicky's own, and her weak
+open mouth hung at the corners as that of a woman faint with weeping.
+Little Em's knees and elbows were knobs in the midst of limbs of
+unnatural length. Rarely could a meal be seen ahead; and when it came,
+it made Dicky doubtful whether or not hunger were really caused by
+eating. But his chief distress was to see that little Em cried not like
+a child, but silently, as she strove to thread needles or to smear
+matchbox labels. And when good fortune brought match-boxes, there was an
+undue loss on the twopence farthing in the matter of paste. The stuff
+was a foul mess, sour and faint, and it was kept in a broken tea-cup,
+near which Dicky had detected his sister sucking her fingers; for in
+truth little Em stole the paste.
+
+On and off, by one way and another, Mrs Perrott made enough to keep the
+rent paid with indifferent regularity, and sometimes there was a copper
+or so left over. She did fairly well, too, at the churches and
+prayer-meetings; people saw her condition, and now and again would give
+her something beyond the common dole; so that she learned the trick of
+looking more miserable than usual at such places.
+
+The roof provided, Dicky felt that his was the task to find food. Alone,
+he might have rubbed along clear of starvation, but there were his
+mother and his sister. Lack of victuals shook his nerve and made him
+timid. Moreover, his terror grew greater than ever at the prospect of
+being caught in a theft. He lay awake at night and sweated to think of
+it. Who would bring in things from the outer world for mother and Em
+then? And the danger was worse than ever. He had felt the police-court
+birch, and it was bad, very bad. But he would take it every day and take
+it almost without a tear, rather than the chance of a reformatory.
+Magistrates were unwilling to send boys to reformatories while both
+father and mother were at hand to control them, for that were relieving
+the parents of their natural responsibility; but in a case like Dicky's,
+a 'schooling' was a very likely thing. So that Dicky, as he prowled, was
+torn between implacable need and the fear of being cut off from all
+chance of supplying it.
+
+It was his rule never to come home without bringing something, were it
+no more than a mildewed crust. It was a resolve impossible to keep at
+times, but at those times it was two in the morning ere he would drag
+himself, pallid and faint, into the dark room where the others might
+be--probably were--lying awake and unfed. Rather than face such a
+homecoming he had sometimes ventured on a more difficult feat than
+stealing in the outer world: he had stolen in the Jago. Sam Cash, for
+instance, had lost a bloater.
+
+Dicky never ate at Weech's now. Rarely, indeed, would he take payment in
+kind, unless it were for something of smaller value than the average of
+his poor pilferings; and then he carried the food home. But cheaper
+things could be bought elsewhere, so that more usually he insisted on
+money payments: to the grief of Mr Weech, who set forth the odiousness
+of ingratitude at length; though his homilies had no sort of effect on
+Dicky's morals.
+
+Father Sturt saw that Hannah Perrott gained no ground in her struggle,
+and urged her to apply for outdoor parish relief, promising to second
+her request with the guardians. But with an odd throwback to the
+respectability of her boiler-making ancestry, she disliked the notion of
+help from the parish, and preferred to remain as she was; for there at
+least her ingrained inertness seemed to side with some phantom of
+self-respect. To her present position she had subsided by almost
+imperceptible degrees, and she was scarce conscious of a change. But to
+parish relief there was a distinct and palpable step: a step that, on
+the whole, it seemed easier not to take. But it was with eagerness that
+she took a Maternity Society's letter, wherewith the vicar had provided
+himself on her behalf. For her time was drawing near.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+Josh Perrott well understood the advantage of good prison-behaviour, and
+after six months in his Chelmsford cell he had earned the right to a
+visit from friends. But none came. He had scarcely expected that anybody
+would, and asked for the order merely on the general principle that a
+man should take all he can get, useful or not. For there would have been
+a five shilling fare to pay for each visitor from London, and Hannah
+Perrott could as easily have paid five pounds. And indeed she had other
+things to think of.
+
+Kiddo Cook had been less observed of late in the Jago. In simple fact he
+was at work. He found that a steady week of porterage at Spitalfields
+Market would bring him sixteen shillings and perhaps a little more; and
+he had taken Father Sturt's encouragement to try another week, and a
+week after that. Father Sturt too, had cunningly stimulated Kiddo's
+ambitions: till he cherished aspirations to a fruit and vegetable stall,
+with a proper tarpaulin cover for bad weather; though he cherished them
+in secret, confident that they were of his own independent conception.
+Perhaps the Perrotts saw as much of Kiddo as did anybody at this time.
+For Kiddo, seeing how it went with them (though indeed it went as badly
+with others too) built up laboriously a solemn and most circumstantial
+Lie. There was a friend of his, a perfect gentleman, who used a
+beer-shop by Spitalfields Market, and who had just started an extensive
+and complicated business in the general provision line. He sold all
+sorts of fruit and vegetables fresh, and all sorts of meat, carrots,
+cabbages, saveloys, fried fish and pease-pudding cooked. His motto
+was:--'Everything _of_ the best.' But he had the misfortune to be quite
+unable himself to judge whether his goods were really of the best or
+not, in consequence of an injury to his palate, arising from a blow on
+the mouth with a quart pot, inflicted in the heat of discussion by a
+wealthy acquaintance. So that he, being a perfect gentleman, had
+requested Kiddo Cook, out of the friendship he bore him, to drop in
+occasionally and test his samples. 'Take a good big whack, you know,'
+said he, 'and get the advice of a friend or two, if _you_ ain't sure.'
+So Kiddo would take frequent and handsome whacks accordingly, to the
+perfect gentleman's delight; and, not quite knowing what to do with all
+the whacks, or being desirous of an independent opinion on them (there
+was some confusion between these two motives) he would bring Mrs Perrott
+samples, from time to time, and hope it wouldn't inconvenience her. It
+never did.
+
+It was late in the dusk of a rainy day that Kiddo Cook stumped into Old
+Jago Street with an apple in his pocket for Em. It was not much, but
+money was a little short, and at any rate the child would be pleased. As
+he climbed the stairs he grew conscious of sounds of anguish, muffled by
+the Perrotts' door. There might have been sobs, and there seemed to be
+groans; certainly little Em was crying, though but faintly, and
+something--perhaps boot-heels--scraped on the boards. Kiddo hesitated a
+little, and then knocked softly. The knock was unnoticed, so in the end
+he pushed the door open.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The day had been a bad one with the Perrotts. Dicky had gone out early,
+and had not returned. His mother had tramped unfed to the sackmakers,
+but there was no work to be got. She tried the rush bag people, with a
+like result. Nor was any matchbox material being given out. An
+unregarded turnip had rolled from a shop into the gutter, and she had
+seized it stealthily. It was not in nature to take it home whole, and
+once a corner was cleared, she dragged herself Jago-ward, gnawing the
+root furtively as she went. And so she joined Em at home late in the
+afternoon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kiddo pushed the door open and went in. At his second step he stood
+staring, and his chin dropped. 'Good Gawd!' said Kiddo Cook.
+
+He cleared the stairs in three jumps. He stood but an instant on the
+flags before the house, with a quick glance each way, and then dashed
+off through the mud.
+
+Pigeony Poll was erratic in residence, but just now she had a room by
+the roof of a house in Jago Row, and up the stairs of this house Kiddo
+ran, calling her by name.
+
+'Go over to Perrotts', quick!' he shouted from the landing below as Poll
+appeared at her door. 'Run, for Gawd's sake, or the woman'll croak! I'm
+auf to Father's.' And he rushed away to the vicar's lodgings.
+
+Father Sturt emerged at a run, and made for a surgeon's in Shoreditch
+High Street. And when the surgeon reached Hannah Perrott he found her
+stretched on her ragged bed, tended, with anxious clumsiness, by Pigeony
+Poll; while little Em, tearful and abashed, sat in a corner and nibbled
+a bit of turnip.
+
+Hannah Perrott had anticipated the operation of the Maternity Society
+letter, and another child of the Jago had come unconsenting into its
+black inheritance.
+
+Father Sturt met the surgeon as he came away in the later evening, and
+asked if all were well. The surgeon shrugged his shoulders. 'People
+would call it so,' he said. 'The boy's alive, and so is the mother. But
+you and I may say the truth. You know the Jago far better than I. Is
+there a child in all this place that wouldn't be better dead--still
+better unborn? But does a day pass without bringing you just such a
+parishioner? Here lies the Jago, a nest of rats, breeding, breeding, as
+only rats can; and we say it is well. On high moral grounds we uphold
+the right of rats to multiply their thousands. Sometimes we catch a rat.
+And we keep it a little while, nourish it carefully, and put it back
+into the nest to propagate its kind.'
+
+Father Sturt walked a little way in silence. Then he said:--'You are
+right, of course. But who'll listen, if you shout it from the housetops?
+I might try to proclaim it myself, if I had time and energy to waste.
+But I have none--I must work, and so must you. The burden grows day by
+day, as you say. The thing's hopeless, perhaps, but that is not for me
+to discuss. I have my duty.'
+
+The surgeon was a young man, but Shoreditch had helped him over most of
+his enthusiasms. 'That's right,' he said, 'quite right. People are so
+very genteel, aren't they?' He laughed, as at a droll remembrance. 'But,
+hang it all, men like ourselves needn't talk as though the world was
+built of hardbake. It's a mighty relief to speak truth with a man who
+knows--a man not rotted through with sentiment. Think how few men we
+trust with the power to give a fellow creature a year in gaol, and how
+carefully we pick them! Even damnation is out of fashion, I believe,
+among theologians. But any noxious wretch may damn human souls to the
+Jago, one after another, year in year out, and we respect his right: his
+sacred right.'
+
+At the 'Posties' the two men separated. The rain, which had abated for a
+space, came up on a driving wind, and whipped Dicky Perrott home to meet
+his new brother.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+Things grew a little easier with the Perrotts. Father Sturt saw that
+there was food while the mother was renewing her strength, and he had a
+bag of linen sent. More, he carried his point as to parish relief by
+main force. It was two shillings and three quartern loaves a week.
+Unfortunately the loaves were imprinted with the parish mark, or they
+might have been sold at the chandler's, in order that the whole measure
+of relief might be passed on to the landlord (a very respectable man,
+with a chandler's shop of his own) for rent. As it was, the bread
+perforce was eaten, and the landlord had the two shillings, as well as
+eighteenpence which had to be got in some other way. Of course, Hannah
+Perrott might have 'taken in lodgers' in the room, as others did, but
+she doubted her ability to bully the rent out of them, or to turn them
+out if they did not pay. Whatever was pawnable had gone already, of
+course, except the little nickel-plated clock. That might have produced
+as much as sixpence, but she had a whim to keep it. She regarded it as a
+memorial of Josh, for it was his sole contribution to the family
+appointments.
+
+Dicky, with a cast-off jacket from the vicar's store, took to hanging
+about Liverpool Street Station in quest of bags to carry. Sometimes he
+got bags, and coppers for carrying them: sometimes he got kicks from
+porters. An hour or two of disappointment in this pursuit would send him
+off on the prowl to 'find' new stock for Mr Weech. He went farther
+afield now: to the market-places in Mile End and Stepney, and to the
+riverside, where there were many chances--guarded jealously, however, by
+the pirate boys of the neighbourhood, who would tolerate no interlopers
+at the wharves. In the very early morning, too, he practised the
+sand-bag fake, in the Jago. For there were those among the Jagos who
+kept (two even bred) linnets and such birds, and prepared them for
+julking, or singing matches at the Bag of Nails. It was the habit of the
+bird-fanciers to hang their little wooden cages on nails out of window,
+and there they hung through the night: for it had been noted, as a
+surprising peculiarity in linnets, that a bird would droop and go off
+song after a dozen or so of nights in a Jago room, in company with
+eight, ten or a dozen human sleepers, notwithstanding the thoughtful
+shutting of windows. So that any early riser provided with a little bag
+packed with a handful or so of sand, could become an opulent bird-owner
+in half-an-hour. Let but the sand-bag be pitched with proper skill at
+the bottom of a cage, and that cage would leave the nail, and come
+tumbling and fluttering down into the ready hands of the early riser.
+The sand-bag brought down the cage and fell quietly on the flags, which
+was why it was preferred before a stone. The sand-bag faker was moved by
+no particular love of linnets. His spoil was got rid of as soon as the
+bird-shops opened in Club Row. And his craft was one of danger.
+
+Thus the months went with Dicky, and the years. There were changes in
+the Jago. The baby was but three months old when Father Sturt's new
+church was opened, and the club set going in new buildings; and it was
+at that time that Josh Perrott was removed to Portland. Even the gradual
+removal of the Old Jago itself was begun. For the County Council bought
+a row of houses at the end of Jago Row, by Honey Lane, with a design to
+build big barrack dwellings on the site. The scenes of the Jago Court
+eviction were repeated, with less governed antics. For the County
+Council knew not Jago ways; and when deputations came forth weeping,
+protesting the impossibility of finding new lodgings, and beseeching a
+respite, they were given six weeks more, and went back delighted into
+free quarters. At the end of the six weeks a larger deputation protested
+a little louder, wept a great deal more, and poached another month; for
+it would seem an unpopular thing to turn the people into the street.
+Thus in the end, when the unpopular thing had to be done, it was with
+sevenfold trouble, loud cursing of the County Council in the public
+street, and many fights. But this one spot of the Jago cleared, the
+County Council began to creep along Jago Row and into Half Jago Street;
+and after long delay the crude yellow brick of the barrack dwellings
+rose above the oft-stolen hoardings, and grew, storey by storey. Dicky
+was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. If Josh Perrott had only earned his
+marks, he would soon be out now.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+Josh Perrott earned his marks, and in less than four years from his
+conviction he came away from Portland. It was a mere matter of hours ere
+his arrival in London, when Dicky, hands in pockets, strolled along Old
+Jago Street, and by the 'Posties' to High Street.
+
+Dicky was almost at his seventeenth birthday. He had grown his utmost,
+and stood five feet two. He wore a cap with a cloth peak and ear-laps
+tied at the top with strings, slap-up kicksies, cut saucy, and a
+bob-tail coat of the out-and-out description: though all these glories
+were torn and shabby, and had been bought second-hand. He was safe from
+any risk of the reformatory now, being well over the age; and he had had
+the luck never to have been taken by the police since his father's
+lagging--though there were escapes too narrow to be thought about with
+comfort. It was a matter for wonderment, and he spoke of it with pride.
+Here he was, a man of long experience, and near seventeen years old, yet
+he had never been in prison. Few, very few of such an age could say
+that.
+
+Sometimes he saw his old enemy, the hunchback, who worked at a
+shoemaker's, but he saw him with unconcern. He cared nothing for
+tale-bearing now. The memory of old injuries had dulled, and, after all,
+this was a merely inconsiderable hunchback, whom it were beneath his
+dignity to regard with anything but tolerant indifference. Bob Roper
+steered clear at such encounters, and showed his teeth like a cat, and
+looked back malevolently. It didn't matter.
+
+Dicky was not married, either in the simple Jago fashion or in church.
+There was little difference, as a matter of fact, so far as facility
+went. There was a church in Bethnal Green where you might be married for
+sevenpence if you were fourteen years old, and no questions asked--or
+at any rate they were questions answers whereunto were easy to invent.
+You just came in, drunk if possible, with a batch of some scores, and
+rowdied about the church with your hat on, and the curate worked off the
+crowd at one go, calling the names one after another. You sang, or you
+shouted, or you drank out of a bottle, or you flung a prayer-book at a
+friend, as the fancy took you; and the whole thing was not a bad joke
+for the money, though after all sevenpence is half-a-gallon, and not to
+be wasted. But Dicky had had enough to do to look after his mother and
+Em and little Josh--as Hannah Perrott had called the baby. Dicky,
+indeed, had a family already. More: the Jago girls affected him with an
+odd feeling of repulsion. Not of themselves, perhaps, though they were
+squalid drabs long ere they were ripe for the sevenpenny church: but by
+comparison with the clean, remote shop-girls who were visible through
+the broad windows in the outer streets.
+
+Dicky intended the day to be a holiday. He was not going 'out,' as the
+word went, for ill-luck had a way of coming on notable days like this,
+and he might easily chance to 'fall' before his father got home. He was
+almost too big now for carrying bags at Liverpool Street, because small
+boys looked cheaper than large ones--not that there was anything
+especially large about Dicky, beyond his height of five feet two; and at
+the moment he could think of nothing else that might turn a copper. He
+stood irresolute on the High Street footway, and as he stood, Kiddo Cook
+hove in sight, dragging a barrow-load of carrots and cabbages. Kiddo had
+not yet compassed the stall with the rain-proof awning. But it was
+almost in sight, for the barrow could scarce hold all that he could
+sell; and there was a joke abroad that he was to be married in Father
+Sturt's church: some facetiously suggesting that Mother Gapp would prove
+a good investment commercially, while others maintained the greater
+eligibility of old Poll Rann.
+
+''Tcheer, Dicky!' said Kiddo, pulling up and wiping his cap-lining with
+a red cotton handkerchief. 'Ol' man out to-day, ain't 'e?'
+
+'Yus,' Dicky answered. ''Spect 'im up to-night.'
+
+Kiddo nodded, and wiped his face. ''Spose the mob'll git up a break for
+'im,' he said; 'but 'e'll 'ave a bit o' gilt from stir as well, won't
+'e? So 'e'll be awright.' And Kiddo stuffed his handkerchief into his
+trousers pocket, pulled his cap tight, and bent to his barrow-handles.
+
+Dicky turned idly to the left, and slouched to the corner of Meakin
+Street. There he loafed for a little while, and then went as aimlessly
+up the turning. Meakin Street was much as ever. There were still the
+chandlers' shops, where tea and sugar were sold by the farthingsworth,
+and the barber's where hair was fashionably cut for three half-pence:
+though Jago hair was commonly cut in another place and received little
+more attention. There was still Walker's cook-shop, foggy with steam,
+its windows all a-trickle, and there was the Original Slap-up Tog
+Emporium, with its kicksies and its benjamins cut saucy as ever, and its
+double fakements still artful. At the 'dispensary' there was another
+young student, but his advice and medicine were sixpence, just as his
+remote predecessor's had been for little Looey, long forgotten. And
+farther down on the opposite side, Mr Aaron Weech's coffee-shop, with
+its Sunday-school festival bills, maintained its general Band-of-Hope
+air, and displayed its shrivelled bloaters, its doubtful cake, and its
+pallid scones in an odour of respectability and stale pickles. Dicky
+glanced in as he came by the door, and met the anxious eye of Mr Weech,
+whom he had not seen for a fortnight. For Dicky was no boy now, but knew
+enough to sell at Cohen's or elsewhere whenever possible, and to care
+not a rap for Mr Weech.
+
+As that tradesman saw Dicky, he burst into an eager smile, and came
+forward. 'Good mornin',--er--' with a quick glance--'Mr Perrott! Good
+mornin'! You're quite a stranger, reely!'
+
+_Mister_ Perrott! Mr Weech was very polite. Dicky stopped, and grunted a
+cautious salutation.
+
+'Do come in, Mr Perrott. Wy, is the good noos right wot I 'ear, about
+yer father a-comin' 'ome from--from the country?'
+
+Dicky confirmed the news.
+
+'Well I _am_ glad t' 'ear that now.' Mr Weech grinned exceedingly,
+though there was something lacking in his delight. 'But there, wot'll
+you 'ave, Mr Perrott? Say anythink in the 'ole shop and welcome! It's
+sich an 'appy occasion, Mr Perrott, I couldn't think o' chargin' you a
+'apeny. 'Ave a rasher, now, do. There's one on at this very moment.
+Sairer! ain't that rasher done yut?'
+
+Dicky did not understand this liberality, but he had long since adopted
+the policy of taking all he could get. So he sat at a table, and Mr
+Weech sat opposite.
+
+'Jist like ole times, ain't it?' said Mr Weech. 'An' that reminds me I
+owe you a shillin'. It's that pair o' noo boots you chucked over the
+back fence a fortnight ago. W'en I come to look at 'em, they was
+better'n wot I thought, an' so I says to meself, "This won't do," says
+I. "On'y ninepence for a pair o' boots like them ain't fair," I says,
+"an' I'd rayther be at a lawss on 'em than not be fair. Fair's fair, as
+the apostle David says in the Proverbs, an' them boots is worth very
+near _one_-an'-nine. So I'll give Mr Perrott another shillin'," I says,
+"the very next time I see 'im." An' there it is.'
+
+He put the shilling on the table, and Dicky pocketed it, nothing loth.
+The thing might be hard to understand, but that concerned him not.
+There was the shilling. Likewise, there was the bacon, and the coffee
+that went with it, and Dicky went at them with a will, recking nothing
+of why they were there, and nothing of any matter which might make the
+giver anxious in the prospect of an early meeting with Josh.
+
+'Ah,' Mr Weech went on, 'it'll be quite a pleasure to see yer father
+agin, that it will. Wot a blessed release! "Free from the lor O 'appy
+condition," as the 'ymn says. I 'ope 'e'll be well an' 'arty. An'
+if--_if_ there should be anythink in the way of a friendly lead or a
+subscription or wot not, I 'ope--remember this, Mr Perrott,
+won'tcher?--I 'ope you'll let me 'ave a chance to put down somethink
+good. Not as I can reely afford it, ye know, Mr Perrott--trade's very
+pore, an' it's sich a neighb'r'ood!--but I'll do it for yer father--yus,
+if it's me last copper. Ye won't forgit that, will ye? An' if 'e'd like
+any little relish w'en 'e comes 'ome--sich as a 'addick or a bit o'
+'am--wy, I'll wrop it up an' send it.'
+
+This was all very handsome, and Dicky wished some notion of the sort had
+occurred to Mr Weech on a few of the dinnerless days of the past four
+years. But he went away wondering if it might not be well to regard Mr
+Weech with caution for a while. For there must be a reason for all this
+generosity.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+It was in Mother Gapp's that Josh Perrott and his family met. Hannah had
+started out with an idea of meeting him at Waterloo Station; but,
+finding herself an object of distinction and congratulation among the
+women she met, she had lingered by the way, accepting many little drops,
+to prove herself not unduly proud, and so had failed of her intent.
+Josh, on his part, had not been abstinent. He had successfully run the
+gauntlet of Prisoners' Aid Societies and the like, professing to have 'a
+job waiting for him' in Shoreditch, and his way across London had been
+freely punctuated at public-houses; for his prison gratuity was a very
+pleasant and useful little sum. And now, when at last they met, he was
+not especially gracious. He wanted to know, not only why he had found
+nobody at home, but also why Hannah had never been to see him at
+Portland. As to the second question, the obvious and sufficient answer
+was that the return fare to Portland would have been some twenty-five
+shillings: a sum that Hannah had never seen together since Josh left
+her. As to the first, she protested, with muddled vehemence, that she
+had gone to meet him, and had missed him by some mistake as to arrival
+platforms. So that at length, urged thereto by the rest of the hour's
+customers at the Feathers, Josh kissed her sulkily and ordered her a
+drink. Em was distrustful at first, but drank her allowance of gin with
+much relish, tipping the glass again and again to catch the last drop;
+and little Josh, now for the first time introduced to Josh the elder,
+took a dislike to his father's not particularly sober glare and grin,
+and roared aloud upon his knee, assailing him, between the roars, with
+every curse familiar in the Jago, amid the genial merriment of the
+company. Dicky came in quietly, and stood at his father's elbow with
+the pride natural to a dutiful son on such an occasion. And at
+closing-time they all helped each other home.
+
+In the morning Josh rose late. He looked all the better for his lagging,
+browner than ever in the face, smarter and stouter. In a corner he
+perceived a little heap of made match-boxes, and, hard by, the material
+for more. It was Em's work of yesterday morning. 'Support 'ome
+ind_us_tries,' said Josh, musingly. 'Yus. Twopence-farden a gross.' And
+he kicked the heap to splinters.
+
+He strolled out into the street, to survey the Jago. In the bulk it was
+little changed, though the County Council had made a difference in the
+north-east corner, and was creeping farther and farther still. The
+dispossessed Jagos had gone to infect the neighbourhoods across the
+border, and to crowd the people a little closer. They did not return to
+live in the new barrack-buildings; which was a strange thing, for the
+County Council was charging very little more than double the rents which
+the landlords of the Old Jago had charged. And so another Jago, teeming
+and villainous as the one displaced, was slowly growing, in the form of
+a ring, round about the great yellow houses. But the new church and its
+attendant buildings most took Josh's notice. They were little more than
+begun when last he walked Old Jago Street in daylight, and now they
+stood, large and healthy amid the dens about them, a wonder and a pride.
+As he looked, Jerry Gullen and Bill Rann passed.
+
+'Wayo, brother-in-law!' sang out Bill Rann, who remembered the Old
+Bailey fiction of four years back, and thought it a capital joke.
+
+'Nice sort o' thing, ain't it?' said Jerry Gullen with indignant
+sarcasm, jerking his thumb toward the new church. 'The street's clean
+ruined. Wot's the good o' livin' 'ere now? Wy, a man mustn't even do a
+click, blimy!'
+
+'An' doncher?' asked Josh with a grin. Hereat another grin broke wide on
+Jerry Gullen's face, and he went his way with a wink and a whistle.
+
+'And so you're back again, Josh Perrott!' said old Beveridge, seedier
+than ever, with the 'Hard Up' fresh chalked on the changeless hat. 'Back
+again! Pity you couldn't stay there, isn't it? Pity we can't all stay
+there.'
+
+Josh looked after the gaunt old figure with much doubt and a vague
+indignation: for such a view was foreign to his understanding. And as he
+looked Father Sturt came out of the church, and laid his hand on Josh's
+shoulder.
+
+'What!' exclaimed the vicar, 'home again without coming to see me! But
+there, you must have been coming. I hope you haven't been knocking long?
+Come in now, at any rate. You're looking wonderfully well. What a
+capital thing a holiday is, isn't it--a good long one?' Taking Josh by
+the arm he hauled him, grinning, sheepish and almost blushing, toward
+the club door. And at that moment Sam Cash came hurrying round Luck Row
+corner, with his finger through a string, and on that string a bunch of
+grouse.
+
+'Dear me,' said Father Sturt, turning back, but without releasing Josh's
+arm. 'Here's our dear friend, Sam Cash, taking home something for his
+lunch. Come, Sam, with such a fine lot of birds as that, I'm sure you'll
+be proud to tell us where they came from. Eh?'
+
+For a moment Sam Cash was a trifle puzzled, even offended. Then there
+fell over his face the mask of utter inexpression which the vicar had
+learned to know. Said Sam Cash, stolidly: 'I bin 'avin' a little
+shootin' with a friend.'
+
+'Dear, dear, what a charming friend! And where are his moors? Nowhere
+about the Bethnal Green Road, I suppose, by the goods depot? Come now,
+I'm sure Josh Perrott would like to know. You didn't get any shooting in
+your little holiday, did you, Josh?' Josh grinned, delighted, but Sam
+shuffled uneasily, with a hopeless sidelong glance as in search of a
+hole wherein to hide. 'Ah, you see,' Father Sturt said, 'he doesn't want
+his friend's hospitality to be abused. Let me see--two, four, six--why
+there must be nine or ten brace, and all at one shot, too! Sam always
+makes his bag at one shot, you know, Josh, whatever the game is. Yes,
+wonderful shooting. And did you shoot the label at the same time, Sam?
+Come, I _should_ like to look at that label!'
+
+But the wretched Sam was off at a bolt, faster than a police pursuit
+would have sent him, while Josh guffawed joyously. To be 'rotted' by
+Father Sturt was the true Jago terror, but to the Jagos looking on it
+was pure delight. Theft was a piece of the Jago nature; but at least
+Father Sturt could wither the pride of it by such ridicule as the Jago
+could understand.
+
+'There--he's very bashful for a sportsman, isn't he, Josh?' the vicar
+proceeded. 'But you must come and see the club at once. You shall be a
+member.'
+
+Josh spent near an hour in the new buildings. Father Sturt showed him
+the club, the night shelter, the church, and his own little rooms. He
+asked, too, much about Josh's intentions for the future. Of course, Josh
+was 'going to look for a job.' Father Sturt knew he would say that.
+Every Jago had been going to look for a job ever since the vicar first
+came to the place. But he professed to take Josh's word seriously, and
+offered to try to get him taken on as a plasterer at some of the new
+County Council buildings. He flattered Josh by reminding him of his
+command of a regular trade. Josh was a man with opportunities, and he
+should be above the pitiable expedients of the poor untradesmanlike
+about him. Indeed, he should leave the Jago altogether, with his family,
+and start afresh in a new place, a reputable mechanic.
+
+To these things Josh Perrott listened with fidgety deference, answering
+only 'Yus, Father,' when it seemed to be necessary. In the end he
+promised to 'think it over,' which meant nothing, as the parson well
+knew. And in the mood in which Josh came away he would gladly have
+risked another lagging to serve Father Sturt's convenience; but he would
+rather have suffered one than take Father Sturt's advice.
+
+He made the day a holiday. He had been told that he was in for a little
+excitement, for it was held that fitting time had arrived for another
+scrap with Dove Lane; but the affair was not yet moving. Snob Spicer had
+broken a window with a Dove-Laner's head, it was true, but nothing had
+come of it, and etiquette demanded that the next card should be played
+by Dove Lane. For the present, the Jago was content to take thought for
+Josh's 'friendly lead.' Such a thing was everybody's right on return
+from a lagging, and this one was fixed for a night next week.
+
+All that day Mr Weech looked out anxiously, but Josh Perrott never
+passed his way.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+Bill Rann called for Josh early the next morning, and they strolled down
+Old Jago Street in close communion.
+
+'Are you on for a job?' asked Bill. ''Cos I got one cut an' dried--a
+topper, an' safe as 'ouses.'
+
+'Wot sort o' job's this?'
+
+'Wy a bust--unless we can screw it.'
+
+This meant a breaking-in, with a possibility of a quieter entrance by
+means of keys. It was unpleasantly suggestive of Josh's last exploit,
+but he answered: 'Awright. Depends, o' course.'
+
+'O, it's a good un.' Bill Rann grinned for no obvious reason, and
+slapped his leg to express rapturous amusement. 'It's a good un--you can
+take yer davy o' that. I bin a thinkin' about it for a fortnight, but
+it wants two. Damme, it's nobby!' And Bill Rann grinned again, and made
+two taps of a step-dance. 'Wotjer think,' he pursued, suddenly serious,
+'wotjer think o' screwin' a fence?'
+
+It was a novel notion, but in Josh's mind, at first flush, it seemed
+unsportmanlike. 'Wot fence?' asked Josh.
+
+Bill Rann's grin burst wide again. He bent low, with outstretched chin,
+and stuck his elbows out as he answered: 'Wy, ole Weech!'
+
+Josh bared his teeth--but with no smile--looking sharply in the other's
+upturned face. Bill Rann, bent nearly double, and with hands in pockets,
+flapped his arms in the manner of wings, chuckled aloud, and, jerking
+his feet back and forth, went elaborately through the first movement of
+the gallows-flap. 'Eh? eh?' said he. ''Ow's that strike ye, ole cock?'
+
+Josh answered not, but his parted lips stretched wide, and his
+tongue-tip passed quickly over them while he thought.
+
+'It'll be a fair cop for 'im,' Bill pursued, eagerly. ''E's treated us
+all pretty mean, one time or other. Wy, I bet 'e _owes_ us fifty quid
+atween us, wot with all the times 'e's squeeged us for a bit. It'll on'y
+be goin' to bring away our own stuff!'
+
+'G-r-r-r!' Josh growled, glaring fiercely; 'it was 'im as put me away
+for my laggin'! Bleed'n' swine!'
+
+Bill Rann stopped, surprised. 'Wot--'im?' he exclaimed. 'Ole Weech
+narked ye? 'Owjer know that?'
+
+Josh told the tale of his negotiations in the matter of the Mogul's
+watch, and described Weech's terror at sight of his dash at the
+shop-door. 'I'm on,' said Josh in conclusion. 'It's one way o' payin'
+'im, an' it'll bring a bit in. On'y _'e_ better not show 'isself w'ile
+I'm abaat! _'E_ wouldn't git auf with a punch on the chin, like the
+bloke at 'Ighbury!' Josh Perrott ended with a tigerish snarl and a white
+spot at the curl of each of his nostrils.
+
+'Blimy!' said Bill Rann; 'an' so it was 'im, was it? I often wondered
+'oo you meant. Well, flimpin' 'im's the best way. Won't 'e sing a
+bleed'n' 'ymn w'en 'e finds 'is stuff weeded!' Bill flung back his
+head, and laughed again. 'But there,--let's lay it out.' And the two men
+fell to the discussion of methods.
+
+Weech's back-fence was to be his undoing. It was the obvious plan. The
+front shutters were impracticable in such a place as Meakin Street; but
+the alleys in the rear were a perfect approach. Bill Rann had surveyed
+the spot attentively, and, after expert consideration, he had selected
+the wash-house window as the point of entrance. Old boxes and
+packing-wood littered the yard, and it would be easy to mount a selected
+box, shift the catch of the little window, and wriggle in, feet first,
+without noise. True, the door between the wash-house and the other rooms
+might be fastened, but it could be worked at under cover; and Bill Rann
+had a belief that there must be a good deal of 'stuff' in the wash-house
+itself. There would be nobody in the house but Weech, because the
+wretched old woman, who swept the floors and cooked bloaters, was sent
+away at night; so that every room must be unoccupied but one.
+
+As for tools, Josh had none, but Bill Rann undertook to provide them;
+and in the matter of time it was considered that that same night would
+be as good as any. It would be better than most, in fact, for it was
+Wednesday, and Bill Rann had observed that Mr Weech went to the bank in
+High Street, Shoreditch, pretty regularly on Thursday mornings.
+
+This day also Mr Weech kept a careful watch for Josh Perrott, but saw
+him not.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+Hannah Perrott did her best to keep Josh from going out that night. She
+did not explain her objections, because she did not know precisely what
+they were, though they were in some sort prompted by his manner; and it
+was solely because of her constitutional inability to urge them with any
+persistence that she escaped forcible retort. For Josh was in a savage
+and self-centred mood.
+
+'Wy, wot's up?' asked Bill Rann, when they met, looking doubtfully in
+his pal's face. 'You ain't bin boozin', 'ave ye?'
+
+Josh repelled the question with a snarl. 'No I ain't,' he said. 'Got the
+tools?' There was a thickness in his voice, with a wildness in his eye,
+that might well explain his partner's doubt.
+
+'Yus. Come under the light. I couldn't git no twirls, an' we sha'n't
+want 'em. 'Ere's a screwdriver, an' two gimlets, an' a knife for the
+winderketch, an' a little james, an' a neddy--'
+
+'A neddy!' Josh cut in, scornfully pointing his thumb at the instrument,
+which some call life-preserver. 'A neddy for Weech! G-r-r-r! I might
+take a neddy to a _man_!'
+
+'That's awright,' Bill replied. 'But it 'ud frighten 'im pretty well,
+wouldn't it? Look 'ere. S'pose we can't find the oof. W'y shouldn't we
+wake up Mr Weech very quiet an' respeckful, an' ask 'im t' 'elp us? 'E's
+all alone, an' I'm sure 'e'll be glad to 'blige, w'en 'e sees this 'ere
+neddy, without waitin' for a tap. W'y, blimy, I b'lieve 'e'd be afraid
+to sing out any'ow, for fear o' bringin' in the coppers to find all the
+stuff 'e's bought on the crook! It's all done, once we're inside!'
+
+It was near midnight, and Bill Rann had observed Weech putting up his
+shutters at eleven. So the two Jagos walked slowly along Meakin Street,
+on the side opposite Weech's, with sharp eyes for the windows.
+
+All was quiet; there was no visible light--none from the skylight over
+the shop door, none from the window above, none from the garret window
+above that. They passed on, crossed the road, strolled back, and
+listened at the door; there was no sound from within. The clock in a
+distant steeple struck twelve, and was joined at the fourth stroke by
+the loud bell of St Leonards, hard by; and ere the last mild note had
+sounded from the farthest clock in the awakened chorus, Josh Perrott and
+Bill Rann had taken the next turning, and were pushing their way to the
+alleys behind Weech's.
+
+Foul rat-runs, these alleys, not to be traversed by a stranger. Josh and
+Bill plunged into one narrow archway after another, each of which might
+have been the private passage of a house, and came at last, stealthy and
+unseen, into the muddy yard.
+
+Weech's back-fence was before them, and black house-backs crowded them
+round. There were but one or two lights in the windows, and those
+windows were shut and curtained. The rear of Weech's house was black and
+silent as the front. They peered over the fence. The yard was
+pitch-dark, but faint angular tokens here and there told of heaped boxes
+and lumber. 'We won't tip 'im the whistle this time,' whispered Bill
+Rann, with a smothered chuckle. 'Over!'
+
+He bent his knee, and Josh straddled from it over the rickety fence with
+quiet care, and lowered himself gingerly on the other side. 'Clear
+'ere,' he whispered. 'Come on.' Since Bill's display of the tools Josh
+had scarce spoken a word. Bill wondered at his taciturnity, but
+respected it as a business-like quality in the circumstances.
+
+It was but a matter of four or five yards to the wash-house window, but
+they bent and felt their way. Josh took up an old lemonade-case as he
+went, and planted it on the ground below the window, stretching his hand
+for the knife as he did so. And now he took command and foremost place.
+
+It was an old shoemaker's knife, with too long a handle; for there was a
+skew-joint in the sash, and the knife would not bend. Presently Bill
+Rann, below, could see that Josh was cutting away the putty from the
+pane, and in five minutes the pane itself was put into his hand. He
+stooped, and laid it noiselessly on the soft ground.
+
+Josh turned the catch and lifted the sash. There was some noise, but not
+much, as he pushed the frame up evenly, with a thumb at each side. They
+waited; but it was quite still, and Josh, sitting on the sill,
+manoeuvred his legs, one at a time, through the narrow opening. Then,
+turning over, he let himself down, and beckoned Bill Rann to follow.
+
+Bill Rann had a small tin box, with an inch of candle on the inside of
+one end, so that when the wick was lit the contrivance made a simple but
+an effective lantern, the light whereof shone in front alone, and could
+be extinguished at a puff. Now a match was struck, and a quick view
+taken of the wash-house.
+
+There was not much about; only cracked and greasy plates, jars, tins,
+pots and pans, and in a corner a miscellaneous heap, plainly cheap
+pilferings, covered with a bit of old carpet. The air was offensive with
+the characteristic smell of Weech's--the smell of stale pickles.
+
+'There ain't nothin' to waste time over 'ere,' said Josh, aloud. 'Come
+on!'
+
+'Shut up, you damn fool!' exclaimed Bill Rann, in a whisper. 'D'jer want
+to wake 'im?'
+
+'Umph! Why not?' was the reply, still aloud. Bill began to feel that his
+pal was really drunk. But, silent once more, Josh applied himself to the
+door of the inner room. It was crank and old, worn and battered at the
+edges. Josh forced the wedge end of the jemmy through the jamb,
+splintering the perished wood of the frame, and, with a push, forced the
+striking-box of the lock off its screws. There was still a bolt at the
+top; that at the bottom had lost its catch--but this gave as little
+trouble as the lock. Bill Rann strained the door open from below, the
+jemmy entered readily, and in a few seconds the top bolt was in like
+case with the bottom.
+
+They entered the room behind the shop, and it was innocent and
+disappointing. A loo table, four horse-hair-covered chairs, a mirror,
+three coloured wall-texts, two china figures and a cheap walnut
+sideboard--that was all. The slow step of a policeman without stopped,
+with a push at the shop-door, to test its fastenings, and then went on;
+and stronger than ever was the smell of stale pickles.
+
+To try the shop would be mere waste of time. Weech's pocket was the
+till, and there could be no other prize. A door at the side of the room,
+latched simply, gave on the stairs. 'Take auf yer boots,' Bill
+whispered, unlacing his own, and slinging them across his shoulder by
+the tied laces.
+
+But Josh would not, and he said so, with an oath. Bill could not
+understand him. _Could_ it be drink? Bill wished him a mile away.
+'Awright,' he whispered, 'you set down 'ere w'ile I slip upstairs an'
+take a peep. I bet the stuffs in the garret. Best on'y one goes, quiet.'
+
+Josh sat, and Bill, taking his lantern, crept up the stairs noiselessly,
+save for one creak. He gained the stair-head, listened a moment,
+tip-toed along the small landing, and was half-way up the steep and
+narrow garret-stairs, when he heard a sound, and stopped. Somebody was
+on the lower flight.
+
+There was a heavy tread, with the kick of a boot against stair or
+skirting-board; and then came noisy steps along the landing. Josh was
+coming up in his boots! Bill Rann was at his wits' end. He backed down
+the garret-stairs, and met Josh at the foot. 'Are ye balmy?' he hissed
+fiercely, catching Josh by the collar and pulling him into the turn of
+the stairs. 'D'ye want another five stretch?'
+
+A loud creak and a soft thump sounded from behind the door at the other
+end of the landing; and then a match was struck. 'Keep back on the
+stairs,' Bill whispered. ''E's 'eard you.' Josh sat on a stair,
+perfectly still, with his legs drawn up out of sight from the door. Bill
+blew out his light. He would not venture open intimidation of Weech now,
+with Josh half muzzy, lest some burst of lunacy brought in the police.
+
+A soft treading of bare feet, the squeak of a door-handle, a light on
+the landing, and Aaron Weech stood at his open door in his shirt,
+candle in hand, his hair rumpled, his head aside, his mouth a little
+open, his unconscious gaze upward; listening intently. He took a slight
+step forward. And then Bill Rann's heart turned over and over.
+
+For Josh Perrott sprang from the stair, and, his shoulders humped and
+his face thrust out, walked deliberately across the landing. Weech
+turned his head quickly; his chin fell on his chest as by jaw-break;
+there were but dots amid the white of his eyes; his head lay slowly
+back, as the candle tilted and shot its grease on the floor. The door
+swung wider as his shoulder struck it, and he screamed, like a rabbit
+that sees a stoat. Then, with a wrench, he turned, letting drop the
+candle, and ran shrieking to the window, flung it open, and yelled into
+the black street. ''Elp! 'Elp! P'lice! _Murder! Murder! Murder!
+Murder!_'
+
+'Run, Josh--run, ye blasted fool!' roared Bill Rann, bounding across the
+landing, and snatching at his arm.
+
+'Go on--go on! I'm comin'!' Josh answered without turning his head. And
+Bill took the bottom flight at a jump. The candle flared as it lay on
+the floor, and spread a greasy pool about it.
+
+'_Murder! Murder! Mu-r-r--_'
+
+Josh had the man by the shoulder, swung him back from the window,
+gripped his throat, and dragged him across the carpet as he might drag a
+cat, while Weech's arms waved uselessly, and his feet feebly sought a
+hold on the floor.
+
+'Now!' cried Josh Perrott, glaring on the writhen face below his own,
+and raising his case-knife in the manner of a cleaver, 'sing a hymn!
+Sing the hymn as'll do ye most good! You'll cheat me when ye can, an'
+when ye can't you'll put me five year in stir, eh? Sing a hymn, ye
+snivellin' nark!'
+
+From the street there came the noise of many hurrying feet and of a
+scattered shouting. Josh Perrott made an offer at slashing the slaty
+face, checked his arm, and went on.
+
+'You'll put down somethin' 'an'some at my break, will ye? An' you'll
+starve my wife an' kids all to bones an' teeth four year! Sing a hymn,
+ye cur!'
+
+He made another feint at slashing. Men were beating thunderously at the
+shop door, and there were shrill whistles.
+
+'Won't sing yer hymn? There ain't much time! My boy was goin' straight,
+an' earnin' wages: someone got 'im chucked. A man 'as time to think
+things out, in stir! Sing, ye son of a cow! Sing! Sing!'
+
+Twice the knife hacked the livid face. But the third hack was below the
+chin; and the face fell back.
+
+The bubbling Thing dropped in a heap, and put out the flaring candle.
+Without, the shouts gathered to a roar, and the door shook under heavy
+blows. 'Open--open the door!' cried a deep voice.
+
+He looked from the open window. There was a scrambling crowd, and more
+people were running in. Windows gaped, and thrust out noisy heads. The
+flash of a bull's-eye dazzled him, and he staggered back. 'Perrott!
+Perrott!' came a shout. He had but glanced out, but he was recognised.
+
+He threw down his knife, and made for the landing, slipping on the wet
+floor and stumbling against the Heap. There were shouts from behind the
+house now; they were few, but they were close. He dashed up the narrow
+stairs, floundered through the back garret, over bags and boxes and
+heaps of mingled commodities, and threw up the sash. Men were stumbling
+invisibly in the dark yard below. He got upon the sill, swung round by
+the dormer-frame, and went, hands and knees, along the roof. Yells and
+loud whistles rose clamant in the air, and his own name was shouted to
+and fro. Then the blows on the shop-door ceased with a splintering
+crash, and there was a trampling of feet on floor-boards.
+
+The roofs were irregular in shape and height, and his progress was slow.
+He aimed at reaching the roof of Father Sturt's old club building, still
+empty. He had had this in mind from the moment he climbed from the
+garret-window; for in the work of setting the drains in order an iron
+ventilating pipe had been carried up from the stable-yard to well above
+the roof. It was a stout pipe, close by the wall, to which it was
+clamped with iron attachments. Four years had passed since he had seen
+it, and he trusted to luck to find it still standing, for it seemed his
+only chance. Down below people scampered and shouted. Crowds had sprung
+out of the dark night as by magic; and the police--they must have been
+lying in wait in scores. It seemed a mere matter of seconds since he had
+scaled the back fence; and now people were tearing about the house
+behind him, and shouting out of windows to those below. He hoped that
+the iron pipe might not be gone.
+
+Good--it was there. He peered from the parapet down into the
+stable-yard, and the place seemed empty. He gripped the pipe with hands
+and knees, and descended.
+
+The alley had no back way: he must take his chance in Meakin Street. He
+peeped. At the street end there was a dark obstruction, set with spots
+of light: a row of police. That way was shut; he must try the Jago--Luck
+Row was almost opposite, and no Jago would betray him. The hunters were
+already on the roofs. Men shouted up to them from the street, and kept
+pace with them, coming nearer. He took a breath and dashed across,
+knocking a man over at the corner.
+
+Up Luck Row, into Old Jago Street he ran, past his own home, and across
+to a black doorway, just as Father Sturt, roused by the persistent din,
+opened his window. The passage was empty, and for an instant he paused,
+breathless. But there were howls without, and the pelting of many feet.
+The man knocked over at the corner had given the alarm, and the hunt was
+up.
+
+Into the back-yard and over the fence; through another passage into New
+Jago Street; with a notion to gain the courts by Honey Lane and so away.
+But he was thinking of the Jago as it had been--he had forgotten the
+demolishment. As he neared Jago Row the place of it lay suddenly before
+him--an open waste of eighty yards square, skirted by the straight
+streets and the yellow barracks, with the Board School standing dark
+among them. And along the straight streets more men were rushing, and
+more police. They were new-comers: why not venture over? He rubbed his
+cheek, for something like a film of gum clung to it. Then he
+remembered, and peered closely at his hands. Blood, sticking and drying
+and peeling; blood on hands and face, blood on clothes, without a doubt.
+To go abroad thus were to court arrest, were he known or not. It must be
+got off; but how? To go home was to give himself up. The police were
+there long since--they swarmed the Jago through. Some half-dismantled
+houses stood at hand, and he made for the nearest.
+
+There were cellars under these houses, reached from the back-yards. Many
+a Jago had been born, had lived, and had died in such a place. A cellar
+would hide him for an hour, while he groped himself clean as he might.
+Broken brickwork littered the space that had been the back-yard. Feeling
+in the dark for the steps, which stood in a little pit, his foot turned
+on a stone, and he pitched headlong.
+
+The cellar itself was littered with rubbish, and he lay among it a
+little while, breathless and bruised. When he tried to rise, he found
+his ankle useless. It was the old sprain, got at Mother Gapp's before
+his lagging, and ever ready to assert itself. He sat among the
+brickbats to pull off the boot--that was foul and sticky too--and he
+rubbed the ankle. He had been a fool to think of the cellar: why not any
+corner among the walls above? He had given way to the mere panic
+instinct to burrow, to hide himself in a hole, and he had chosen one
+wherefrom there was no second way of escape--none at all but by the
+steps he had fallen in at. Far better to have struck out boldly across
+the streets by Columbia Market to the canal: who could have seen the
+smears in the darkness? And in the canal he might have washed the lot
+away, secure from observation, under a bridge. The thing might be
+possible, even now, if he could stand the pain. But no, the foot was
+useless when he tried it. He was trapped like a rat. He rubbed and
+kneaded the ankle diligently, and managed to draw the boot on. But stand
+on both legs he could not. He might have crawled up the steps on hands
+and knees, but what was the use of that? So he sat, and waited.
+
+Knots of men went hurrying by, and he caught snatches of their talk.
+There had been a murder--a man was murdered in his bed--it was a
+woman--a man had murdered his wife--there were two murders--three--the
+tale went every way, but it was always Murder, Murder, Murder. Everybody
+was saying Murder: till in the passing footsteps, in the vague shouts in
+the distance, and presently in the mere black about him he heard the
+word still--Murder, Murder, Murder. He fell to contrasting the whispered
+fancy with the real screams in that bedroom. He wondered what Bill Rann
+thought of it all, and what had become of the james and the gimlets. He
+pictured the crowd in Old Jago Street, pushing into his room, talking
+about him, telling the news. He wondered if Hannah had been asleep when
+they came, and what she said when they told her. And more people hurried
+past the ruined house, all talking Murder, Murder, still Murder.
+
+The foot was horribly painful. Was it swelling? Yes, he thought it was;
+he rubbed it again. What would Dicky do? If only Dicky knew where he
+was! That might help. There was a new burst of shouts in the distance.
+What was that? Perhaps they had caught Bill Rann; but that was unlikely.
+They knew nothing of Bill--they had seen but one man. Perhaps they were
+carrying away the Heap on a shutter: that would be no nice job,
+especially down the steep stairs. There had been very little in the
+wash-house, and nothing in the next room; the garrets were pretty full
+of odd things, but no doubt the money was in the bedroom. The smell of
+stale pickles was very strong.
+
+So his thoughts chased one another--eager, trivial, crowded--till his
+head ached with their splitting haste. To take heed for the future, to
+plan escape, to design expedients--these were merely impossible, sitting
+there inactive in the dark. He thought of the pipe he had slid down,
+what it cost, why they put it there, who the man was that he ran against
+at Luck Row, whether or not he hurt him, what the police would do with
+the bloaters and cake and bacon at the shop, and--again--of the smell of
+stale pickles.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Father Sturt was up and dressed, standing guard on the landing outside
+the Perrotts' door. The stairs were full of Jagos--mostly
+women--constantly joined by new-comers, all anxious to batter the door
+and belabour the hidden family with noisy sympathy and sedulous
+inquiries: all, that is, except the oldest Mrs Walsh in the Jago, who,
+possessed by an unshakable conviction that Josh's wife must have 'druv
+'im to it,' had come in a shawl and a petticoat to give Hannah a piece
+of her mind. But all were driven back and sent grumbling away, by Father
+Sturt.
+
+Every passage from the Jago was held by the police, and a search from
+house to house was begun. With clear consciences the Jagos all could
+deny any knowledge of Josh Perrott's whereabouts; but a clear conscience
+was little valued in those parts, and one after another affirmed point
+blank that the man seen at the window was not Perrott at all, but a
+stranger who lived a long way off. This, of course, less by way of
+favouring the fugitive than of baffling the police: the Jago's first
+duty. But the police knew the worth of such talk, and the search went
+on.
+
+Thus it came to pass that in the grey of the morning a party in New
+Jago Street, after telling each other that the ruins must be carefully
+examined, climbed among the rubbish, and were startled by a voice from
+underground.
+
+'Awright,' cried Josh Perrott in the cellar. 'I'm done; it's a cop. Come
+an' 'elp me out o' this 'ole.'
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+The Lion and Unicorn had been fresh gilt since he was there before, but
+the white-headed old gaoler in the dock was much the same. And the big
+sword--what did they have a big sword for, stuck up there, over the red
+cushions, and what was the use of a sword six foot long? But perhaps it
+wasn't six foot after all--it looked longer than it was; and no doubt it
+was only for show, and probably a dummy with no blade. There was a
+well-dressed black man sitting down below among the lawyers. What did he
+want? Why did they let him in? A nice thing--to be made a show of, for
+niggers! And Josh Perrott loosened his neckcloth with an indignant tug
+of the forefinger, and went off into another train of thought. He had a
+throbbing, wavering headache, the outcome of thinking so hard about so
+many things. They were small things, and had nothing to do with his own
+business; but there were so many of them, and they all had to be got
+through at such a pace, and one thing led to another.
+
+Ever since they had taken him he had been oppressed by this plague of
+galloping thought, with few intervals of rest, when he could consider
+immediate concerns. But of these he made little trouble. The thing was
+done. Very well then, he would take his gruel like a man. He had done
+many a worse thing, he said, that had been thought less of.
+
+The evidence was a nuisance. What was the good of it all? Over and over
+and over again. At the inquest, at the police court, and now here.
+Repeated, laboriously taken down, and repeated again. And now it was
+worse than ever, for the judge insisted on making a note of everything,
+and wrote it down slowly, a word at a time. The witnesses were like
+barrel-organs, producing the same old tune mechanically, without
+changing a note. There was the policeman who was in Meakin Street at
+twelve-thirty on the morning of the fourth of the month, when he heard
+cries of Murder, and proceeded to the coffee-shop. There was the other
+policeman who also 'proceeded' there, and recognised the prisoner, whom
+he knew, at the first-floor window. And there was the sergeant who had
+found him in the cellar, and the doctor who had made an examination, and
+the knife, and the boots, and all of it. It was Murder, Murder, Murder
+still. Why? Wasn't it plain enough? He felt some interest in what was
+coming--in the sentence, and the black cap, and so on--never having seen
+a murder trial before. But all this repetition oppressed him vaguely
+amid the innumerable things he had to think of, one thing leading to
+another.
+
+Hannah and Dicky were there, sitting together behind the glass partition
+that rose at the side of the dock. Hannah's face was down in her hands,
+and Dicky's face was thin and white, and he sat with his neck stretched,
+his lips apart, his head aside to catch the smallest word. His eyes,
+too, were red with strained, unwinking attention. Josh felt vaguely
+that they might keep a bolder face, as he did himself. His sprained foot
+was still far from well, but he stood up, putting his weight on the
+other. He might have been allowed to sit if he had asked, but that would
+look like weakness.
+
+There was another judge this time, an older one, with spectacles. He had
+come solemnly in, after lunch, with a bunch of flowers in his hand, and
+Josh thought he made an odd figure in his long red gown. Why did he sit
+at the end of the bench, instead of in the middle, under the long sword?
+Perhaps the old gentleman, who sat there for a little while and then
+went away, was the Lord Mayor. That would account for it. There was
+another room behind the bedroom at Weech's, which he had never thought
+about. Perhaps the money was there, after all. Could they have missed
+any hiding place in the shop parlour? No: there was the round table,
+with the four chairs about it, and the little sideboard; besides the
+texts on the wall, and two china figures on the mantel-piece--that was
+all. There was a copper in the wash-house, but there was nothing in it.
+The garret was a very good place to keep things in; but there was a
+strong smell of stale pickles. He could smell it now--he had smelt it
+ever since.
+
+The judge stopped a witness to speak of a draught from a window. Josh
+Perrott watched the shutting of the window--they did it with a cord. He
+had not noticed a draught himself. But pigeons were flying outside the
+panes and resting on the chimney-stacks. Pud Palmer tried to keep
+pigeons in Jago Row, but one morning the trap was found empty. A
+poulterer gave fourpence each for them. They were ticketed at
+eighteenpence a pair in the shop, and that was fivepence profit apiece
+for the poulterer. Tenpence a pair profit on eleven pairs was nearly ten
+shillings--ten shillings all but tenpence. They wouldn't have given any
+more in Club Row. A man had a four-legged linnet in Club Row, but there
+was a show in Bethnal Green Road with a two-headed sheep. It was outside
+there that Ginger Stagg was pinched for lob-crawling. And so on, and so
+on, till his head buzzed again.
+
+His counsel was saying something. How long had he been talking? What was
+the good of it? He had told him that he had no defence. The lawyer was
+enlarging on the dead man's iniquities, talking of provocation, and the
+heat of passion, and the like. He was aiming desperately at a
+recommendation to mercy. That was mere foolery.
+
+But presently the judge began to sum up. They were coming to something
+at last. But it was merely the thrice-told evidence once more. The judge
+blinked at his notes, and went at it again; the policeman with his
+whistle, and the other with his lantern, and the doctor, and the
+sergeant, and the rest. It was shorter this time, though. Josh Perrott
+turned and looked at the clock behind him, with the faces over it,
+peering from the gallery. But when he turned to face the judge again he
+had forgotten the time, and crowded trivialities were racing through the
+narrow gates of his brain once more.
+
+There was a cry for silence, and then a fresh voice spoke. 'Gentlemen of
+the jury, have you agreed upon your verdict?'
+
+'We have.' The foreman was an agitated, colourless man, and he spoke in
+a low tone.
+
+'Do you find the prisoner at the bar guilty, or not guilty?'
+
+'Guilty.'
+
+Yes, that was right; this was the real business. His head was clear and
+ready now.
+
+'And is that the verdict of you all?'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+Was that Hannah sobbing?
+
+A pale parson in his black gown came walking along by the bench, and
+stood like a tall ghost at the judge's side, his eyes raised and his
+hands clasped. The judge took a black thing from the seat beside him,
+and arranged it on his head. It was a sort of soft mortarboard, Josh
+noted curiously, with a large silk tassel hanging over one side, giving
+the judge, with his wig and his spectacles and his red gown, a horribly
+jaunty look. No brain could be clearer than Josh Perrott's now.
+
+'Prisoner at the bar, have you anything to say why sentence of death
+should not be passed on you according to law?'
+
+'No sir--I done it. On'y 'e was a worse man than me!'
+
+The Clerk of Arraigns sank into his place, and the judge spoke.
+
+'Joshua Perrott, you have been convicted, on evidence that can leave no
+doubt whatever of your guilt in the mind of any rational person, of the
+horrible crime of wilful murder. The circumstances of your awful offence
+there is no need to recapitulate, but they were of the most brutal and
+shocking character. You deliberately, and with preparation, broke into
+the house of the man whose death you have shortly to answer for in a
+higher court than this: whether you broke in with a design of robbery as
+well as of revenge by murder I know not, nor is it my duty to consider:
+but you there, with every circumstance of callous ferocity, sent the
+wretched man to that last account which you must shortly render for
+yourself. Of the ill-spent life of that miserable man, your victim, it
+is not for me to speak, nor for you to think. And I do most earnestly
+beseech you to use the short time yet remaining to you on this earth in
+true repentance, and in making your peace with Almighty God. It is my
+duty to pronounce sentence of that punishment which not I, but the law
+of this country, imposes for the crime which you have committed. The
+sentence of the Court is: that you be taken to the place whence you
+came, and thence to a place of execution: and that you be there Hanged
+by the Neck till you be Dead: and may the Lord have Mercy on your Soul!'
+
+'Amen!' It was from the tall black figure.
+
+Well, well, that was over. The gaoler touched his arm. Right. But first
+he took a quick glance through the glass partition. Hannah was falling
+over, or something,--a mere rusty swaying bundle,--and Dicky was holding
+her up with both arms. Dicky's face was damp and grey, and twitching
+lines were in his cheeks. Josh took a step toward the partition, but
+they hurried him away.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+All this hard thinking would be over in half an hour or so. What was to
+come now didn't matter; no more than a mere punch in the eye. The worst
+was over on Saturday, and he had got through that all right. Hannah was
+very bad, and so was Dicky. Em cried in a bewildered sort of way,
+because the others did. Little Josh, conceiving that his father was
+somehow causing all the tears, kicked and swore at him. He tried to get
+Hannah to smile at this, but it was no go; and they had to carry her out
+at last. Dicky was well-plucked though, bad as he was. He felt him shake
+and choke when he kissed him, but he walked out straight and steady,
+with the two children. Well, it was over....
+
+He hoped they would get up a break in the Jago for Hannah and the
+youngsters. His own break had never come off--they owed him one. The
+last break he was at was at Mother Gapp's, before the Dove-Laners fell
+through the floor. It must have cost Mother Gapp a deal of money to put
+in the new floor; but then she must have made a lot in her time, what
+with one thing and another. There was the fencing, and the houses she
+had bought in Honey Lane, and the two fourpenny doss-houses in Hoxton
+that they said were hers, and--well, nobody could say what else. Some
+said she came of the gipsies that used to live at the Mount years ago.
+The Mount was a pretty thick place now, but not so thick as the Jago:
+the Jagos were thick as glue and wide as Broad Street. Bob the Bender
+fell in Broad Street, toy-getting, and got a stretch and a half....
+
+Yes, yes, of course, they always tolled a bell. But it was rather
+confusing, with things to think about.
+
+Ah, they had come at last. Come, there was nothing more to think about
+now; nothing but to take it game. Hold tight--Jago hold tight.... 'No
+thank you, sir--nothing to say, special. On'y much obliged to ye, thank
+ye kindly, for the grub an'--an' bein' kind an' wot not. Thanks all of
+ye, come to that. Specially you, sir.' It was the tall black figure
+again....
+
+What, this was the chap, was it? Seedy-looking. Sort of undertaker's man
+to look at. All right--straps. Not cords to tie, then. Waist; wrists;
+elbows; more straps dangling below--do them presently. This was how they
+did it, then.... This way?
+
+'I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth
+in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and
+believeth in Me shall never die.'
+
+A very big gate, this, all iron, painted white. Round to the right. Not
+very far, they told him. It was dark in the passage, but the door led
+into the yard, where it was light and open, and sparrows were
+twittering. Another door: in a shed.
+
+This was the place. All white, everywhere--frame too; not black after
+all. Up the steps.... Hold tight: not much longer. Stand there? Very
+well.
+
+'Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full
+of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower: he fleeth as it
+were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.
+
+'In the midst of life....'
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+It was but a little crowd that stood at the Old Bailey corner while the
+bell tolled, to watch for the black flag. This was not a popular murder.
+Josh Perrott was not a man who had been bred to better things; he did
+not snivel and rant in the dock; and he had not butchered his wife nor
+his child, nor anybody with a claim on his gratitude or affection; so
+that nobody sympathised with him, nor got up a petition for pardon, nor
+wrote tearful letters to the newspapers. And the crowd that watched for
+the black flag was a small one, and half of it came from the Jago.
+
+While it was watching, and while the bell was tolling, a knot of people
+stood at the Perrotts' front-doorway, in Old Jago Street. Father Sturt
+went across as soon as the sleepers of the night had been seen away
+from the shelter, and spoke to Kiddo Cook, who stood at the stair-foot
+to drive off intruders.
+
+'They say she's been settin' up all night, Father,' Kiddo reported, in a
+hushed voice. 'An' Poll's jest looked in at the winder from Walsh's, and
+says she can see 'em all kneelin' round a chair with that little clock
+o' theirs on it. It's--it's more'n 'alf an hour yut.'
+
+'I shall come here myself presently, and relieve you. Can you wait? You
+mustn't neglect trade, you know.'
+
+'I'll wait all day, Father, if ye like. Nobody sha'n't disturb 'em.'
+
+When Father Sturt returned from his errand, 'Have you heard anything?'
+he asked.
+
+'No, Father,' answered Kiddo Cook. 'They ain't moved.'
+
+There were two faint notes from a distant steeple, and then the bell of
+St Leonards beat out the inexorable hour.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+Kiddo Cook prospered. The stall was a present fact, and the awning was
+not far off; indeed, he was vigilantly in search of a second-hand one,
+not too much worn. But with all his affluence he was not often drunk.
+Nothing could be better than his pitch--right out in the High Street, in
+the busiest part, and hard by the London and County branch bank. They
+called it Kiddo's Bank in the Jago, and made jokes about alleged
+deposits of his. If you bought a penn'orth of greens from Kiddo, said
+facetious Jagos, he didn't condescend to take the money himself; he gave
+you a slip of paper, and you paid at the bank. And Kiddo had indulged in
+a stroke of magnificence that no other Jago would have thought of. He
+had taken _two_ rooms, in the new County Council dwellings. The secret
+was that Father Sturt had agreed to marry Kiddo Cook and Pigeony Poll.
+There would be plenty for both to do, what with the stall and the
+regular round with the barrow.
+
+The wedding-day came when Hannah Perrott had been one week a widow. For
+a few days Father Sturt had left her alone, and had guarded her privacy.
+Then, seeing that she gave no sign, he went with what quiet comfort he
+might, and bespoke her attention to her concerns. He invented some
+charing work in his rooms for her. She did it very badly, and if he left
+her long alone, she would be found on the floor, with her face in a
+chair-seat, crying weakly. But the work was something for her to do and
+to think about, and by dint of bustling it and magnifying its
+importance, Father Sturt brought her to some degree of mindfulness and
+calm.
+
+Dicky walked that morning in a sort of numb, embittered fury. What
+should he do now? His devilmost. Spare nobody and stop at nothing. Old
+Beveridge was right that morning years ago. The Jago had got him, and it
+held him fast. Now he went doubly sealed of the outcasts: a Jago with a
+hanged father. Father Sturt talked of work, but who would give _him_
+work? And why do it, in any case? What came of it before? No, he was a
+Jago and the world's enemy; Father Sturt was the only good man in it; as
+for the rest, he would spoil them when he could. There was something for
+to-morrow night, if only he could get calmed down enough by then. A
+builder's yard in Kingsland with an office in a loft, and money in a
+common desk. Tommy Rann had found it, and they must do it together; if
+only he could get this odd numbness off him, and have his head clear. So
+much crying, perhaps, and so much trying not to, till his head was like
+to burst. Deep-eyed and pale, he dragged round into Edge Lane, and so
+into New Jago Street.
+
+Jerry Gullen's canary was harnessed to the barrow, and Jerry himself was
+piling the barrow with rags and bottles. Dicky stood and looked; he
+thought he would rub Canary's head, but then he changed his mind, and
+did not move. Jerry Gullen glanced at him furtively once or twice, and
+then said: 'Good ole moke for wear, ain't 'e?'
+
+'Yus,' Dicky answered moodily, his talk half random. ''E'll peg out soon
+now.'
+
+''Im? Not 'im. Wy, I bet 'e'll live longer'n you will. _'E_ ain't goin'
+to die.'
+
+'I think 'e'd like to,' said Dicky, and slouched on.
+
+Yes, Canary would be better off, dead. So would others. It would be a
+comfortable thing for himself if he could die quietly then and there.
+But it would never do for mother and the children to be left helpless.
+How good for them all to go off easily together, and wake in some
+pleasant place, say a place like Father Sturt's sitting-room, and
+perhaps find--but there, what foolishness!
+
+What was this unendurable stupor that clung about him like a net? He
+knew everything clearly enough, but it was all in an atmosphere of dull
+heedlessness. There would be some relief in doing something violent--in
+smashing something to little pieces with a hammer.
+
+He came to the ruined houses. There was a tumult of yells, and a crowd
+of thirty or forty lads went streaming across the open waste, waving
+sticks.
+
+'Come on! come on, Jago! 'Ere they are!'
+
+A fight! Ah, what more welcome! And Dove Lane, too--Dove Lane, that had
+taken to bawling the taunt, 'Jago cut-throats,' since ...
+
+He was in the thick of the raid. 'Come on, Jago! Jago! 'Ere they are!'
+Past the Board School and through Honey Lane they went, and into Dove
+Lane territory. A small crowd of Dove-Laners broke and fled. Straight
+ahead the Jagos went, till they were suddenly taken in flank at a
+turning by a full Dove Lane mob. The Jagos were broken by the rush, but
+they fought stoutly, and the street was filled with a surge of combat.
+
+'Jago! Jago hold tight!'
+
+Thin, wasted and shaken, Dicky fought like a tiger. He had no stick till
+he floored a Dove-Laner and took his from him, but then he bludgeoned
+apace, callous to every blow, till he fought through the thick, and
+burst out at the edge of the fray. He pulled his cap tight, and swung
+back, almost knocking over, but disregarding, a leather-aproned, furtive
+hunchback, who turned and came at his heels.
+
+'Jago! Jago hold tight!' yelled Dicky Perrott. 'Come on, Father Sturt's
+boys!'
+
+He was down. Just a punch under the arm from behind. As he rolled, face
+under, he caught a single glimpse of the hunchback, running. But what
+was this--all this?
+
+A shout went up. 'Stabbed! Chived! They chived Dicky Perrott!'
+
+The fight melted. Somebody turned Dicky on his back, and he moaned, and
+lay gasping. He lifted his dabbled hands, and looked at them, wondering.
+They tried to lift him, but the blood poured so fast that they put him
+down. Somebody had gone for a surgeon.
+
+'Take me 'ome,' said Dicky, faintly, with an odd gurgle in his voice.
+'Not 'awspital.'
+
+The surgeon came running, with policemen at his heels. He ripped away
+the clothes from about the wound, and shook his head. It was the lung.
+Water was brought, and cloths, and an old door. They put Dicky on the
+door, and carried him toward the surgery; and two lads who stayed by him
+were sent to bring his friends.
+
+The bride and bridegroom, meeting the news on the way home, set off at a
+run, and Father Sturt followed.
+
+'Good Gawd, Dicky,' cried Poll, tearing her way to the shutter as it
+stopped at the surgery door, 'wot's this?'
+
+Dicky's eye fell on the flowered bonnet that graced the wedding, and his
+lip lifted with the shade of a smile. 'Luck, Pidge!'
+
+He was laid out in the surgery. A crowd stood about the door, while
+Father Sturt went in. The vicar lifted his eyebrows questioningly, and
+the surgeon shook his head. It was a matter of minutes.
+
+Father Sturt bent over and took Dicky's hand. 'My poor Dicky,' he said,
+'who did this?'
+
+'Dunno, Fa'er.'
+
+The lie--the staunch Jago lie. Thou shalt not nark.
+
+'Fetch mother an' the kids. Fa'er!'
+
+'Yes, my boy?'
+
+'Tell Mist' Beveridge there's 'nother way out--better.'
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Child of the Jago, by Arthur Morrison
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #36958 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36958)