"WHY what's that?" said Long Hicks on the way to work in the morning.
"Got cuts all over yer hands!"
"Yes," Johnny answered laconically. "Fighting."
"Fightin'!" Long Hicks looked mighty reproachful. "Jest you be careful
what company you're gettin' into," he said severely. "You're neglectin'
yer drawin' and everything lately, an' now--fightin'!"
"I ain't ashamed of it," Johnny replied gloomily. "An' I've got other
things to think about now, besides drawing."
Hicks stared, stuttered a little, and rubbed his cap over his head. He
wondered whether or not he ought to ask questions.
They went a little way in silence, and then Johnny said: "It's him;
Butson."
"No!" exclaimed Hicks, checking in his stride, and staring at Johnny
again. "What! Bin fightin' Butson?"
Johnny poured out the whole story; and as he told Hicks's eyes widened,
his face flushed and paled, his hands opened and closed convulsively, and
again and again he blew and stuttered incomprehensibly.
"Job is, to drive the brute away," Johnny concluded wearily. "He'll stop
as long as he's fed. An' mother thinks it's a disgrace to get a
separation--goin' before a magistrate an' all. I'm only tellin' you
because I know you won't jaw about it among the neighbours."
That day Long Hicks got leave of absence for the rest of the week,
mightily astonishing Mr. Cottam by the application, for Hicks had never
been known to take a holiday before.
"'Awright," the gaffer growled, "seein' as we're slack. There's one or
two standin' auf for a bit a'ready. But what's up with you wantin' time
auf? Gittin' frisky? Runnin' arter the gals?"
And indeed Long Hicks spent his holiday much like a man who is running
after something, or somebody. He took a walking tour of intricate plan,
winding and turning among the small streets, up street and down, but
tending northward; through Bromley, Bow and Old Ford, and so toward
Homerton and the marshes.
Meantime Johnny walked to and from his work alone, and brooded. He could
not altogether understand his mother's attitude toward Butson. She had
been willing, even anxious, to get rid of him by any process that would
involve no disgrace among the neighbours, and no peril to the trade of
the shop; he had made her life miserable; yet now she tended the brute's
cuts and bumps as though he didn't deserve them, and she cried more than
ever. As for Johnny himself, he spared Butson nothing. Rather he drew a
hideous solace from any torture wherewith he might afflict him.
"When are you going to clear out?" he would say. "You'd rather be kept
than work, but you don't like being thrashed, do you? Thrashed by a boy,
eh? You'll enjoy work a deal better than the life I'll lead you here, I
can tell you. I'll make you glad to drown yourself, mean funk as you
are, before I'm done with you! Don't be too careful with that eye: the
sooner it's well, the sooner I'll bung it up again!"
Bessy marvelled at this development of morose savagery on her brother's
part. With her, though he spoke little, he was kinder than ever, but it
was his pastime to bully Butson: who skulked miserably in the house,
being in no fit state for public exhibition.
As to his search for Nora Sansom, Johnny was vaguely surprised to find
himself almost indifferent. It would have been useless to worry his
mother about it now, and though he spent an hour or two in aimless
tramping about the streets, it was with the uppermost feeling that he
should rather be at home, bullying Butson. He had no notion why, being
little given to introspection; and he was as it were unconscious of his
inner conviction that after all Nora could not be entirely lost. While
Butson's punishment was the immediate concern, and as the thing stood,
the creature seemed scarce to have been punished at all.