POORER THAN RATS.
We had not our shed always to ourselves. One cold evening in autumn,
when there was a sharp east wind, and a drizzling rain, two human
creatures came into the place and cowered down in a corner of our shed.
I call them human creatures, for they certainly were not men; they were
so different from the tall powerful fellows whom I had occasionally seen
at their work in the warehouse. These were much smaller, and so thin
that their bones seemed almost ready to break through the skin. Their
hair hung in long loose masses about their ears. They had nothing on
their feet to protect them from the stones, and one of them had a hurt
upon his heel, which looked red and inflamed.
I found that these were young human beings, neglected and uncared for,
as young rats would not have been. We were at first afraid of them, and
only peered out curiously upon them from our holes and hiding-places;
but when, gathering courage, we ventured to come forward, we seemed to
frighten them as much as they had frightened us.
"Look there-- there, Bob!" screamed the younger child, clinging more
closely to his brother.
"Them bees rats," said the other one more quietly. His poor thin little
face looked as if the life and spirit had been so starved out of it,
that he could not be much astonished at anything.
"I don't like staying here, Bob, amongst the rats!" cried the terrified
little one, attempting to pull his brother towards the entrance by the
sleeve of his jacket. The wretched rag gave way even under his weak
pull, and another rent was added to the many by which the cold crept in
through the poor boy's tattered dress. "I won't stay here; let us go,
let us go!"
"We've no-wheres to go to," replied Bob, in the same dull, lifeless
tone. "Never you mind the rats, Billy, them won't hurt you," he added.
Hurt him! not we! If ever I felt pity it was for those ragged little
urchins. We were well-fed, but they were hungry; Nature had given us
sleek warm coats, but they trembled with cold. It was very clear that it
was much harder to them to support life than if they had been rats.
I wondered if in this great city there were many such helpless children,
and if there were none to care for them!
"I say, Ratto," observed Oddity, licking his soft coat till the
beautiful polish upon it made one almost forget its ugly colour, "'tis a
pity that these children are so dirty; but may be they are not so
particular about such matters as we rats."
In time a sort of acquaintance grew up between me and the ragged boys.
We ceased to fear each other, and I would venture almost close to
Billy's thin little hand when he had a crust of bread to eat, for he
always broke off a little bit for me. The poor little fellow was
crippled and lame, so he rarely left the shed. Bob often went out in
the morning, and returned when it was growing dark, sometimes with food,
and sometimes without it; but whenever he had anything to eat, he always
shared it with his little lame brother. I see them now, crouched close
up together for the sake of warmth. Sometimes Billy cried from hunger
and cold, and his tears made long lines down his grimy face. Bob never
cried, he suffered quite quietly; he patted his little brother's shaggy
head, and spoke kindly to him, in his dull, cheerless way. I felt more
sorry for him than for Billy.
The little one was the more talkative of the two. Perhaps he was more
lively in his nature; or perhaps, from having been a shorter time in a
world of sorrow, he had not learned its sad lessons so well. I certainly
never heard him laugh but once, and then it was when Oddity, who was
more shy than I, ventured for the first time since Billy's coming to
cross the shed.
"Oh! look-- look, Bob! what a funny rat! what a beauty rat!" he cried,
clapping his bony hands together with childish glee.
It was comical to see the expression on Oddity's blunt face on hearing
this unexpected compliment, perhaps the first that he had ever received
in his life. It was enough to have turned the head of a less sober rat;
but he, honest fellow, only lifted up his snub nose with a sort of
bull-dog look, which seemed to say, "Well, there's no accounting for
taste."
"Bob," said little Billy one evening, with more animation than usual,
"I'se been a-watching the rats, and I saw-- only think what I saw!"
"Eh, what did ye see?" replied Bob, drowsily, rubbing his eyes with the
back of his hand. He looked very hungry and tired.
"I was a-watching for the fat spotted one which ran across yesterday,
when out came creeping, creeping, two others" --the child with his
fingers on the floor suited his action to his words,-- "and one had some
white on its back; it looked old and weak; and Bob, I saw as how it was
blind."
"A blind rat!" cried Bob; "'twould soon starve, I take it."
"But there was the other rat at its side, with such shining eyes, and
such a sharp little nose!" I plead guilty to vanity; I could not hear
such a description of myself with Oddity's sober composure. "And the old
blind rat had a little bit of stick in its mouth, just as the blind man
in the lane has a stick in his hand, and the pretty black rat took the
other end in his teeth, and so pulled the old un on his way."
"I'se never heard of rats doing that afore," said Bob.
"That's not all that I saw about 'em," continued Billy. "Out comes the
funny spotted rat from its hole; so I keeps very quiet, not to frighten
it away. And it pattered up to the place where I put the little crumbs;
and what do you think as it did?"
"Ate them," was Bob's quiet reply.
"No, but it didn't though!" cried Billy, triumphantly; "it pushed them
towards the old blind rat. Neither the black un nor the spotted un ate
up one crumb; they left 'em all for the poor blind rat! Now wasn't them
famous little fellows!"
"So rats help one another," said Bob. He did not speak more; but as he
leant back his head, and looked straight up at the roof of the shed,
(there was a great hole in it which the stars shone through, and now and
then a big drop of water from the top came plash, plash, on the muddy
floor below,) he looked up, I say, and I wonder whether he was thinking
the same thing as I was at that moment: "Rats help one another; do none
but human beings leave their fellow-creatures to perish!"