IN THE CITY
The fortune seekers were set down at a street corner near the Quay at
half-past six.
When it had come to the matter of crossing the harbour, from the
Northern Shore to the Quay, in the punt (they two sitting in the cart
the while), they had found themselves called upon to pay a penny each
for the passage over, which they had enjoyed amazingly. Betty paid both
pennies, having the coppers, but she urged John to be quick and get his
shilling changed to pay her back.
At the street corner John suggested leaving her for awhile. "This would
be as good a corner as any other for you, Betty," he said, and slapped
the shutters of a chemist's shop as he spoke, "You stand here, and
you'll catch everybody who goes by."
"There's no one going by yet," said Betty. "What are you going to do?
You're not going to leave me all alone?"
"Well," said John, "we might stick together a bit longer, anyway. I'll
come back for you. You sing your song, and I'll just go and see if any
shops want a boy. I don't suppose the offices are opened yet. What I'd
like is a good warehouse, and then I'd rise to be manager, and partner.
That's the sort of thing. I don't think there's much in a shop after
all, but I'll have to find out where the warehouses are. A tea warehouse
is good, _I_ can tell you. You get sent out to India for the firm, and
then come back and are made a partner."
He started off, only to be stopped after he had gone a few steps, by
Betty's voice calling, "Get your shilling changed, I want my penny"; to
which he nodded.
Betty had the corner all to herself then. Down the street, and up the
street, and down the side street, whichever way she craned her neck she
could see no one.
It seemed to her a very good opportunity to try her powers. So she
commenced. At first it must be confessed she made no more sound than
she had done in talking to John. And the street was so used to voices
that it did not open an eye.
Therefore Betty grew bolder, and forgot in singing that she was
not at the bend in the old home-road, where she had practised
once or twice since she had decided upon her career. Her voice
rose clearly--shrilly--and sometimes she remembered the tune
quite fairly. When she forgot it, she filled in what would have
otherwise been a pause with a little bit out of any other tune
that came into her head.
For those who would like to know the words of the song she was singing,
and who may not have it among their mother's girlhood songs, as Betty
had, it may be as well to copy them from the paper she held in her hand
to refresh her memory from--
"Please give me a penny, sir; my mother dear is dead,
And, oh! I am so hungry, sir--a penny please for bread;
All day I have been asking, but no one heeds my cry,
Will you not give me something, or surely I must die?
"Please give me a penny, sir; you won't say 'no' to me,
Because I'm poor and ragged, sir, and oh! so cold you see;
We were not always begging--we once were rich like you,
But father died a drunkard, and mother she died too."
_Chorus_--
"Please give me a penny, sir; my mother dear is dead,
And, oh! I am so hungry, sir--a penny please for bread."
At the end of the first verse she found it necessary to run her eye over
the paper before beginning the second.
Perhaps it was just as well for her serenity that she did not look up as
she sang. For just as soon as her voice rose into anything approaching a
tune--it was near the end of the first verse--a face looked down upon
her from the corner window of the second story of the chemist's house.
It was a young face, early old--white and drawn and marked by the
unmistakable lines of suffering.
Betty knew nothing about the trouble of the world in those days; nothing
of suffering, nothing of sorrow. And the woman above her knew of all.
She leaned over the window-sill and her eyes smiled pityingly as they
rested on the small bared head.
She had been praying her morning prayer near the open window, begging
for strength to bear her sorrows, and for as many as might be to be
taken from her, when Betty's voice quavered right up to her window.
She looked down, and there was the small singer's curly brown head. She
looked longer, and saw Betty clasp a bare foot in one hand and stand on
one foot, drop the foot from her hand and reverse the action.
It was merely a habit of Betty's, but the woman found in it a sign that
the child was worn and weary--worn and weary before seven o'clock in the
morning.
She drew her dressing-gown around her, searched her dress pocket for her
purse, and leaning out dropped sixpence upon the pavement close to the
little singer.
Betty stopped at once and looked around her, down the street and around
the corner; at the shop shutters and door, but never once so high as the
windows.
The woman smiled to herself.
"Poor little mite," she said. "I must remember even the little children
have their griefs! It should make me grumble less."
Betty ran along the street in the direction John had taken. She felt she
_must_ tell some one. Then, as a thought struck her, she ran back to the
house, looked up to the second story and saw a smiling face, and then
set off again, running down the street for John.
Not seeing him, she stopped at the next corner and examined her coin
lovingly. Then she looked up at _that_ corner window and began to sing
again.
But this time her reward came from the street. Three bluejackets were
walking down the street to the Quay, lurching over the pavement as they
walked. The child's song touched and stirred that latent sentimentality
of theirs.
Her "or _surely_ I shall die," brought a silver threepence from one of
them, and a copper from each of the others.
Betty felt wealthy now, beyond the dreams of avarice. She had made a
shilling in an hour!
She looked at the post office clock high up in the air there above her
head, and it informed her that it was only a quarter past seven. Not
eight o'clock yet! And she had made a shilling! Twelve pennies! As much
as she received in six months by staying at home!
She sat down on the kerbstone to count her money, putting her feet in
the dry gutter _a la maniere_ born. She made first of all a stack of her
half-pennies, and then of her pennies. There were nine half-pennies,
three pennies, a threepenny bit and a sixpence. The grand total she
found was one and fourpence halfpenny. More than even John had started
out with.
While she was thus like a small miser counting her money, a hand swooped
suddenly down upon the heap of coppers and swept them away. Betty looked
up to scream, but it was only John. And he warned her solemnly how
easily such a dreadful theft could be committed.
"I wish to goodness the shops would open," he said discontentedly. "I'm
beginning to want some breakfast, I can tell you."
Betty unfolded her hands and displayed her wealth of coin. "A shilling
in an hour," she said, and John's look of surprised unbelief delighted
her.
"You picked it up!" he said.
"Oh, I didn't!" cried Betty. "People gave it to me just for singing! A
shilling an hour! I forget how much Madam S---- makes in an hour. I
think its more than a pound!"
"Don't you want your breakfast?" asked John.
"Let's count how many hours in a day," said Betty, twisting about to see
a clock, the high post office clock they were walking under now, and
found it. "I want to make my fortune quickly and go home and surprise
them. How much money is in a fortune, John?"
John considered deeply for a minute and then gave it as his idea that
five hundred pounds was usually called a fortune.
[Illustration: "The child's song touched and stirred that latent
sentimentality of theirs."]
"That'll take a good bit of making," said Betty.
"Well, you didn't expect to make it in a day did you?" asked John
roughly.
"Oh, no," said Betty cheerfully, "I was only wondering how many hours
there are in a day--at a shilling an hour."
She began to count slowly on the fingers of one hand all the hours until
seven o'clock at night, the first hour to be from eight till nine
o'clock in the morning.
"Eleven hours!" she said. "That's eleven shillings! Eleven shillings,
John. Oh, and one hour gone, that's twelve! Twelve _shillings_ a day,
just fancy, John! Oh, I'll soon be rich."
"But you couldn't sing every hour in the day," said sensible John,
although his eyes plainly expressed admiration for her brilliant career.
"Why, you'd get hoarse!"
"I only sang twice in this hour," said Betty; "the rest of the time I've
just been counting my money and looking round me."
"But you mightn't make a shilling every hour," said John.
"_But_--some hours I may make more, so it's about equal."
"I wish we could have some breakfast," said John, reverting to his
trouble. "I'm jolly hungry, I can tell you."
"So am I," said Betty. "Twelve shillings a day--six days in a week. Oh,
can I sing on Sundays, John?"
"Hymns," quoth the boy.
"Um! I could sing 'Scatter seeds of kindness' and 'Yield not to
temptation.' Um! I never thought of hymns. I think I'll sing hymns
to-day as well, 'cause I'm not very sure of my song yet, and every now
and then I have to stop to look at the words. Can I sing hymns on other
days than Sundays, John?"
"Better not," said the cautious John; "better keep the proper things for
the proper days. Well, Betty Bruce, if you're going to stay here all
day, I'm not. I'm getting awfully hungry."
At last Betty's motherliness awoke.
"My poor John!" she said, "of course you're hungry. We'll go to a shop
and get a really good breakfast. I wasn't thinking. When a person begins
to make a lot of money, they generally forget other things, don't they?"
"Um!" said John, who had made nothing at all. "We'll go and get a good
breakfast and then we'll be fit for anything, won't we. Come on."
They turned round the corner into King Street, and there to their
delight found the shops one by one opening their eyes--drapers, chemist,
fruiterers, and then at last a shop with cakes in the window.
The children stood at the door and peeped in. They saw myriads of white
tables and a couple of sleepy looking girls. One girl held a broom and
was leaning on its handle and surveying the stretch of floor to be
swept. Her eyes at last went to the door, and Betty, seeing they had
been observed walked slowly in, leaving John outside.
"No," said the girl, shaking her head.
"We want some breakfast," said Betty, and added "please," as her eyes
fell on a trayful of pastry on the counter.
Again the girl shook her head.
"Can't give you any here," she said; "now run away."
Then Betty's face flushed; for though one may sing to earn an honest
livelihood and competency, it is quite another thing to be taken for a
beggar.
"We'll pay for it," she said, and then forgot her pride and urged, "Go
on, we're so hungry! We've been walking about since five o'clock."
Something in the child's face touched the girl's heart. She herself had
been up at half-past five and knew a great deal about poverty and
privation.
"Well, come on then," she said. "Go and sit down at one of them tables
and I'll fetch you something."
Betty ran to the door and called "John," in an ecstatic tone, "come on."
Then the two of them chose a table and sat down.
"Not porridge, please," called Betty to the girl. "Just cakes and
things, and lemonade instead of tea. _I'll_ pay the bill."
But John brought out his shilling.
"I'll pay for myself," he said grimly, "and I'll pay you back the penny
I owe you, too."