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.