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.'