"I knows that I was precious glad to cut it as | ly refreshed. Now, however, matters were mansoon as I saw an opening, though it was to go at aged differently, It was my stepmother's opinnothing better than barking." ion, and one in which my father agreed, that little Polly might as well sleep in my bed. As the good-natured stranger made this last observation, he slipped a penny into my hand, and in consequence of my anxiety to get away to spend it, I lost the rest of the conversation. The words the strange young man had uttered, however, sank deep into my mind-" he was precious glad to cut it and get a place as barker," he had said. Well, and so should I be very glad to cut it and become barker.. And if she had slept, it would have mattered little to me. The chest-of-drawers bedstead in Mrs. Burke's room was of ample size to accommodate both of us, and, as I loved her very much, I should have been rather glad of her company. But she did not sleep. I daresay it was her teeth, poor little soul! but, really, she was dreadfully tiresome. She was laid in my bed in the early But what was barking?" I thought a great part of the evening; and, by dint of creeping in deal about the matter, and could arrive at no myself with extreme caution, I generally conmore feasible conclusion than that a "barker" trived to get to sleep without waking her, and to was a boy that attended a drover, and helped him secure three or four hours' rest. Between one to drive his sheep by means of imitating the bark and two o'clock, however, she invariably awoke, of a dog. Living so close to Smithfield market, squalling her loudest, and refusing to be pacified droves of sheep were not unfrequently to be without an immediate and abundant supply of met with, and I had repeatedly seen boys engaged victuals and drink. To prepare against this, a at the very trade I imagined the stranger to mean. little stock of bread and butter, and a pot full of Indeed, more than once, having got rid of the milk and water, was always placed by the bedbaby for half-an-hour, I had lent a hand at sheep-side, and while it held out against her attacks, all driving myself, and liked the job very much. I was, however, not nearly so clever at it as were some boys I knew, and who could not only bark like a dog, but even imitate the yelp of the animal when hit with a stick, and that in a manner calculated to impose on the most sensible sheep ever driven to Smithfield. I had never known, however, that it was a trade at which to work at regularly for a living, and I could not but reflect that it couldn't be a business at which much money was earned. It was clear that the drover's object in hiring a boy instead of a dog must be a study of economy; and if the boy worked for him for a less sum than would buy a dog his daily meat, to say the least of it, he wasn't likely to grow over-fat. Still the stranger had asserted, and my father had backed the assertion, that "barking" was preferable to carrying a baby about; and this, as I had a right to assume, under the most ordinary circumstances, with a real mother at home who cared for you, and gave you a whacking no oftener than you deserved it. How much more desirable, then, was it for me who had no real mother, a father wh didn't care the price of a pot of beer for me, and no more than half a bellyful of victuals! Carrying the baby about was the bane of my existence, and every day it grew worse and worse to bear; and this not only by reason of Polly growing daily bigger and stronger, as the contents of the next chapter will show. CHAPTER X. DESCRIPTIVE OF MY NOCTURNAL TROUBLES WITH MOTHER, AND RUN AWAY FROM HOME. My supposition that my father's marriage with Mrs. Burke could not make me more uncomfortable than I previously was proved to be altogether fallacious. Prior to that interesting event, however much I might be fagging about during the day, rest came with the evening. Mrs. Burke relieved me of the baby, and come bed-time, I could sleep uninterruptedly, and rise in the morning perfect Piece went well enough. The worst of it was, it never The amount of ingenuity expended by me towards keeping that child quiet might, properly applied, have served for the invention of the steam-engine or the electric telegraph. "Would she go out a-walking with her Jimmy ?" Sometimes, especially if it were a moonlight night, she would agree. Of course, it was only make-believe going a-walking; but she wasn't to know that. We had to dress, as though I meant it. There used to hang up behind the door an old black crape bonnet of Mrs. Burke's, and this I used to tie on her head, wrapping my jacket round her for a cloak. My walking costume consisted solely in an old hairy cap of my father's, reserved and hidden between the bed and the bedstead for the purpose. It was very bad on cold nights to paddle about the uncarpeted floor in this way; but there was no help for it: to have put my trousers on would have jeopardised the success of the scheme. When we were dressed and ready to start, an imaginary Mrs. Burke would address me through the door, bidding me take that dear baby for a nice walk, and show her the shop where they sold such beautiful sugar-sticks; and to this I Would dutifully reply that I was quite ready, and meant to start immediately. Then we would start; but, for our lives, couldn't find the room door. This piece of strategy was the soul of the performance. We couldn't find the door, try our hardest. We wanted to get out to go and buy that sugar-stick, and we couldn't, because that wicked door was hiding. The big crape bonnet was invaluable in carrying out the cheat, its black sides rising like walls on either side of her face, and serving the purpose of "blinkers," so that her vision was limited to the strictly straightforward, and side-glancing rendered impossible. The ack that attended this manoeuvre was of three qualities. Under the influence of the first quality, she would in the course of half-an-hour or so, drop off to sleep in my arms, and remain so while I stealthly slid into bed with her; (it was in hopes of this result that I refrained from putting on my trousers before we set out walking.) If my luck was but middling, she would grow so cold and tired as to ask to be put into bed; or she would be brought to see the feasibility of my suggestion that we had better both lie down and watch the window till the naughty door came back again. The worst of this arrangement was, that she frequently would lie still long enough only for us both to become warm and comfortable, and then to insist on going a-walking again. The worst luck of all was, when she would not go a-walking with her Jimmy; when she turned a deaf ear to promises of sugar-sticks to-morrow; when my imitations of cats and dogs, and donkeys and mad bullocks, instead of inducing her silent wonder and adiniration, drove her frantic from terror, and she would have more 66 bar." "Bar "" was her word for bread and butter, and "Bar! bar! bar!" was her only answer to everything I could say. At such times my stepmother would hammer at the wall with a stick. "What are you doin' wid the dear child, you young scoundhrill ?" แ She wants more 'bar.'' talk of bating him, Jim; but it's best left alone, you may depind. If we can't rule him by kindness, we can't rule him at all. You may bate and bate; but two divils 'll come in at the gate you bate one out of." Strangely enough, soon as ever I had taken my whacking and Mrs. Burke had betaken herself to her own apartment, Polly would cuddle down and be as good as gold, and compose herself to sleep, as though nothing was the matter. Of course, there was nothing objectionable in this as far as it went; the worst of it was, that it really looked as though I could keep her quiet if I liked. deed, when at last I mustered courage enough to complain to my father, he told me so. In "I ain't got no pity for you," said he; "an obstinate little beggar like wot you are deserves all he gets and a good deal more." Well," I answered, (this was on a morning following a whacking which made my ribs feel as though the skin was all grazed off them,)" she ain't a-goin' to knock me about much longer." "Ain't she, though?" was my father's scornful reply. "Why ain't she?" "When I grow a bit bigger I'll show her," I vengefully replied. My father st... at me, and then laughed. "If I was big enough," continued I, encouraged by the laugh, "I'd punch her nose! I'd kick her legs till she didn't have a bit to stand "And is it too great a throuble for ye to get up on. I hate her." and get her some, lazy-bones?" "How can I? There ain't none." "How do ye mane, ain't none?" "She's ate it all. Can't you hear what she keeps hollerin' ?" "Ate it all, you little liar! What! You've been up to your hoggish tricks 'agin, have you? and shtole it all away from the little craythur. Well, you'd betther make her quiet. You know what you'll get if you bring me in there." She was right. I did know "what I should get," having had it so often; and, with tears in my eyes when it came to this, I would beg of Polly to be quiet. Not she. She had heard mammy's voice, and grew more rampagious than ever. Then, with my heart in my mouth, I would presently hear a half-aloud threat from the next room, and a shuffling of hasty feet, and a scrambling at the lock of the door, and, raging like an angry cat, in would rush my stepmother with nothing on but her bed-gown and frilled nightcap. Without a moment's warning, she would fall on me and pummel my unprotected body without mercy; she would wring my head about and knead her bony fists about my sides, till my breath was used up and I could not cry out. My father never knew the extent of the punishment I suffered on these occasions, for all the while she was paying into me, she was clacking in her loudest voice, not about how she was serving me, but how she would serve me if I ever ate away the baby's food again. "Don't talk about it; let him have it, the greedy warmint," my father would cry out, as he lay hearing all the threatening, and none of the spanking. "You lets him off too easy, and that's where he takes advantage of you." "It's little more timpting I can bear before I'll do it," she would answer; "so take care, my fine fellow." And then, when she returned to her own room, she would say, "It's very well to My father laughed again, and appeared to have some little trouble in composing his countenance to a proper expression of sternness. 'Come, don't you jaw me in that way, so I tell you; because it ain't my place to stand and hear it," said he. "She tells you lies-dozens of lies," I further continued; and it coming into my mind what he had said about the hardships of carrying a child about, I thought I might make capital of it. "I never gets no play," said I. "I'm at work from the time I get up till I go to bed, and yet she won't leave me alone." "How d'ye mean at work?" "Why, nursing Polly and ". Well, and what if you do mind the kid?" interrupted he. "The kid can't mind itself, can she, you hard-hearted young wagabone? Do you want to loll about and live on me and yer mother? Why, I'd be ashamed on it if I was as big as you." 'I wish I could get a job of work to go to," said I, earnestly. "You wish!" sneered he. "Jobs of work don't come a-knocking at people's doors and aasking to be done. If you wanted a job of work you'd go and look arter it." 'Where, father?" I asked eagerly. "Where? why, anywhere," replied he, warming with the subject. "Hain't there the markets? Why, when I goes to the 'gate (Billingsgate) or the garden (Covent Garden) as early as four and five o'clock, when you are snoring in bed, I sees boys which, in pint o' size you'd make two of, dodgin' about 'bliged to yearn a penny before they can get a cup of coffee to warm 'em." "But I haven't got no boots nor stockings," said I, "nor yet no cap." "Well, no more hain't they-yet no shirts, half on 'em. I spose you expect to be togged up afore you goes out to get a livin'? P'r'aps you'd like a blue coat with basket buttons and a chimbly-pot hat?" I said something about looking respectable. "Yah!" exclaimed he, with disgust. "Don't talk to me about 'spectability. Don't you think that 'spectability will ever get you a livin', cos, if you do, you're mistaken. The boys I'm a-speaking of carries fish, and tater sieves, and minds carts and barrows; and don't you know if you wore kid gloves and white chokers at that there sort of work you might get 'em spilte? A pretty feller you are to talk about what you will stand and what you won't." And, with increasing disgust, he threw on his hairy cap, lit his short pipe, and walked off. At the time I had this conversation with my father, Mrs. Burke had been my stepmother for about six months, and I was about seven years old. When I told him that I did not mean to put up with Mrs. Burke's cruelty much longer, I meant it. Every day it grew more and more intolerable, especially since the night when my father came home and found her helplessly drunk, and lying in the middle of the room, and gave her a slap or so about the head by way of sobering her. Up to this time she had always kept up an appearance of a sort of decency before him; but now this all went by the board, and her treatment of me in his presence was little or nothing better than when he was away. Often, indeed, should I have gone hungry had it not been for the kindness of Mrs. Winkship, the person mentioned in the early part of this history. Mrs. Winkship had known my mother for many years, and invariably spoke of her as "as good a gal as ever wore shoe-leather. She was as much too good for your father, Jimmy," she used to say, as he is too good for the carneying two-faced Irish vagabond who fished for him and hooked him." Her acquaintance with my stepmother was as of long standing as with my mother. I told Mrs. Winkship about the pair of handsome slippers she had given my father, telling him that they belonged to the dead Mr. Burke. I thought Mrs. Winkship would never have done laughing. "Slippers, indeed!" said she; "why, the poor fellow would even carry his Sunday coat about all the week in his tool basket, knowing that she would pawn it for gin if he left it at home. Jim will find her out one day, and then war-hawks to her." I used to tell all my troubles to Mrs. Winkship. She used to smuggle me into her back kitchen, and give me a tuck-out of anything which might have been left over from dinnertime. Many and many a time has she held my baby for an hour at a stretch while I went off for a game. I asked Mrs. Winkship what a "barker" was, and she told me. I was wrong in supposing that it was anything to do with sheep-driving. A barker, I was told, was a boy who went along with a barrowman, wheeling his barrow to market, minding it while his master was buying his goods, pushing up behind the load as it was wheeled home, and afterwards going with his master on his "rounds," helping him to bawl out what he had to sell. I didn't like to let Mrs. Winkship into the secret that I had thoughts of going into the barking line, still I wanted to get out of her all she knew about it. "Now, how little was the smallest barker you ever saw, ma'am?" I asked her. "How little? Why, I've seen 'em so little that their heads would come no higher than your shoulder," replied she; "but bless your innocent heart, what's the size got to do with it? It's the call-the voice, you know-that does the business. You might be as big as Goliar and as old as Methusalem, but if you didn't have a pro per sort of voice you'd never fetch your salt." And being in a chatty humour, as she generally was after dinner, and when about the third "brown" had been earned of her, she began to talk exactly as I wished her to. She told me that she had known many costermongers, good buyers and good sellers, and yet who were always kept in the background through having a hoarse, or a gruff, or a hollow voice. "Of course," said she, "there are thingscommon things, such as taters, and onions, and cabbages-which are sure to go in whatever voice they 're called, if so be that a man has anything like a reg'lar round, because people knows his time and looks out for him; but with goods which comes promisc'ous, and which are only to be got off by forcin', it's different. Now, there's fish. There may be fish to-morrow, and there mayn't. Even the salesmen in the market can't say for certain. And then, it may be cheap, or it may be dear. Say it's cheap. Say it's soles, and that you buy a lot of 'em. How many do you think you'll sell if you go crawling along with 'em, growling out, 'Here's soles, good soles!" in the same voice as does for turnips or taters ? Why, you won't take enough to buy fat to fry your own supper in. You must put your heart into it, and try and make yourself believe how wonderful cheap your soles are, till you get into quite a perspiration about 'em. You drive sudden and sharp round corners of streets, and at the same moment you pipe up, 'Dover soles! lovely soles! splendid soles! Big as plaice, and all alive! all alive! all alive!' and this you keep up, driving along brisk and keeping up the tune. Presently you set your eyes on your soles, and see a pair which is so large, and so lovely, that you really can't help stopping, which you do as sudden as you turned the corner. 'Oh, I say,' says you, dropping the tune and taking to conversation, 'here's a pair of whackers! blowed if they don't get finer the lower we get into the pad! Just look here, ladies-there's a pair of soles for you!-three-pence!' "That's how to sell soles!" chuckled Mrs. Winkship, bringing her fat hands together with a hearty spank to illustrate the manner in which the "pair" should be joined at the very instant their price was disclosed. "It's the same with fruit. Bless your soul, there's a way of crying your fruit, so as to make everybody's mouth water that hears you-specially stone-fruit. Why, when I was a gal," continued Mrs. Winkship, “I was wonderful good at greengages; as good at anything mind you as here and there one, but at 'gages I topped 'em all. It was only the voice, and knowing how to pick your words; 'juicy greengage!' blooming greengage!' 'meller greengage for eating or preserving!' Many a hot summer's afternoon have I made a pretty pocket, with only just a silk handkercher over my shoulders, and half a sieve of 'gages under my arm." Was mine a musical voice? I didn't ask Mrs. | him I turned to the left, taking Mrs. Winkship's Winkship at the time the above narrated con- parting advice earnestly to heart. versation took place, but the subject remained pretty constantly in my mind. My stepmother was considered a pretty singer, and there were several of her tunes which I knew completely, and used to sing to the baby of nights; still because I knew and could follow, at least to my own satisfaction, every turn in "Young Riley" and the "Bould Soger Boy," it was by no means certain that I had a voice for Dover soles or greengage plums. Had I? Never had the question presented itself so forcibly to me as on the morning on which I had expressed to my father my determination to submit no longer to the pummelling of my stepmother. The worst of it was, my only chance of escape from it, as it appeared to me, was to become a barker, and that, according to Mrs. Winkship, on whom I placed every reliance, could never be unless my voice was suitable. It wasn't easy to test it. I tried several calls under my breath with tolerable success, but was I justified in taking the important step I meditated on such inconclusive grounds? So all-engrossing was the subject as I sat on the doorstep with my sister Polly in my arms, that presently she made an unchecked spring, and went with a crash, and a squall, rolling over the stones. Mrs. Burke was down on me like a thunderbolt. Without waiting for an explanation, or even to pick up Polly, she seized me by the hair, and bumped my head several times against the door-jamb. She made a claw at my ears to wring chem, and missing them through a wriggle on my part, scored my cheek with her nails, and set the blood trickling. She punched me about as though she was one prize-fighter, and I was another. "I'll wring your ugly shnout off, you dirty shwine," said she, and proceeded to take my nose between the knuckles of her fore and middle fingers. The pain was enough to drive me mad. I must have been mad or very nearly, for I made a scramble at her cruel hand, and getting her thumb in my mouth, I dug my teeth into it. It must have hurt her very much, judging from the way she halloed. She let go my face, and in an instant I ducked under her arms, and bolted up the alley as fast as my legs would carry me. CHAPTER XI. When I was thousands of miles from England, the thought would often come into my head, how would it have been if that boy had not been coming in with the rum and water, and I had turned to the right instead of the left? Had I done so, and kept straight on, I should by and by have found myself in the parks, in the fields, out in the country. Then I might have become a ploughboy, a field labourer,-a young fellow with a smock-frock, and a billycock" hat and cloddy boots; I might But there, where's the use of indulging in "ifs," and "buts," and "might have beens?" To the left it was. Down Turnmill Street, through Cow Cross, and still straight on until Smithfield Market was reached. 66 If it was not my good luck that inclined me to run in this direction, that it was so, was my very decided impression at the time. Had Mrs. Burke followed me, my legs might not have been of much use as against hers in a running-match over a level course; but in Smithfield Market it was odds in my favour. I was well used to the pens, being in the habit of spending my rare playtimes there in the games of "touch" and "chevy;" and unless Mrs. Burke was as good at vaulting and jumping as she was at punching and pummelling, she would have had no chance against me. It was not a market-day, and the place was as quiet and as deserted as it always is at such times. Finding myself amongst the pens, my instinct of self-defence led me to hurry to that part of the market where the pigs were sold. I had heard boys of my acquaintance say, "Oh, don't let's play in the pig part, it's so precious slippery." So it was, and especially to people who were not used to it. I climbed to a top bar in the pig shambles, and looked anxiously about me, and soon convinced myself that although Mrs. Burke might have set out after me, she had either lost sight of me or run herself to a standstill. My perch was a capital one for surveying purposes, and I could see all round about for a considerable distance. Everybody, however, that I could make out was quite strange, and did not even look towards me. It was quite as well that they did not, or perhaps one would have stopped, then another, till a mob had got round, and the policeman had come up to inquire what was the matter. IN WHICH I SPEND AN AFTERNOON IN SMITHFIELD take notice of me. FALLING ONCE MORE INTO THE CLUTCHES OF WHETHER Mrs. Burke (I would much rather speak of her so than by any other name, if the reader has no objection) followed me with a view to giving chase, is more than I can say. And when I come to reflect on the deplorable pickle I was in, I wonder that somebody did not To be sure, it was a neighbourhood in which ragged and outcast little boys were not scarce, but my appearance was ten times worse than that of the ordinary ragged outcast. Naturally, I had begun to cry when Mrs. Burke took to punishing me with such diabolical cruelty. I had cried all the way as I ran, and I was crying now. Panting from my long run, sobbing with rage, and pain, and spite, with my tears mingling with the blood that trickled from the wounds Mrs. Burke's nails had inflicted on my cheeks and on my nose; with my hair all uproar Once out of Fryingpan Alley, I never once turned or looked behind me. I passed good Mrs. Winkship sitting on her coke-measure, and she, judging, as I suppose, from my affrighted appear-ious and uncovered by a cap; with my naked feet ance, that I was fleeing from danger, called out, Run, Jimmy, run! good luck to you." Arrived at the mouth of the alley, a boy with threepen'orth of hot rum in his hand was at that moment turning in, and to avoid running against all muddy, and my jacket all torn and tattered; there I sat on a bar in the pig-shambles on the noon of a Wednesday in the merry month of May. This is the picture I see on looking back on those dismal times. When it happened, however, I thought nothing about it particularly, I'll be bound. Ever since my mother died, now nearly a year and a quarter ago, I had had but one pair of boots; and the navy cap with the big peak, in which I followed the black load to Clerkenwell church-yard, was the last that covered my head. As for my tears, they had grown to be more familiar with me than smiles, and a scratch or a bruise more or less was, thanks to the Irishwoman's liberality, not worth thinking about. I had ears, eyes, thoughts but for one thing, and that was Mrs. Burke's coming after me. Knowing the sort of woman she was, I was the more apprehensive. Though she had been sure of me by running me down fairly and openly, I knew that she would very much prefer lying in wait for me in the rear and suddenly pouncing out on me. It was to guard against so terrible a calamity that I had to keep a sharp look-out. It was not until the church clocks chimed four that I began seriously to reflect on what I should do. Should I go home? How dare I? She would kill me; she would wring my head about again, and punch me with her bony knuckles. More than once she had threatened to cut my liver out. No doubt she was cruel enough, and, worse than all, now she had excuse enough; for, however she might treat me, it would be enough for her to hold up her thumb to compel my father to acknowledge that it served me right. What could I say to my father in justification of my savage act? (for I had come to the conclusion that it was a savage act.) I had dropped the baby! With nothing else expected of me than to sit still and hold her tight, I had let her go and hurt her, I didn't know how much. This was a feature of the business which hitherto had altogether escaped me-how much was Polly hurt? She went down a tremendous bump, and she screamed in a very frightful manner. Perhaps some of her bones were broken! Perhaps that was the solution to the otherwise unaccountable circumstance of my mother-in-law not following me. Clearly it was no use to think of going home. Where, then, should I go? By this time it was dusk and the lamplighter was about, and the pig-market became a very dismal place to stay in. I wound my way through the pens till I got to the front row, which is in a line with the thoroughfare called Long Lane, and there I once more sat for further reflection. recover from my surprise, he passed on and was lost in the darkness. I had not even said "thanky" for it, and I didn't know whether to be sorry or glad on that score. It was such a queer sort of twopence. I had not earned it. I had not worked for it. I had not expected it. He had voluntarily given it to me. Other people had given me halfpence many a time, and I had spent them without further thought beyond settling what I should buy. But I did not feel at liberty to spend the strange gentleman's twopence so. Confound his twopence! If he had twopence to give a boy, why didn't he say, "Here's twopence for you," and have done with it? True, I was a poor little wretch, and as far as I remember I did not feel particularly hurt at being so called; it was his ordering me to buy bread with his money that made it seem so much like-well-so much like a beggar's twopence. His words rang in my ears till they tingled as though Mrs. Burke had recently pulled them, and I looked up the street and down the street, and was very much relieved to discover that no one had witnessed the little transaction. Finding that it was so, I soothed my injured dignity by uttering aloud and defiantly towards the way the benevolent man had taken, "You be blowed! who are you ordering? I shan't buy bread neither; I shall buy what I like." So I did. Feeling that the stranger was mine enemy, and one whom it would give me much satisfaction to disobey, I walked down towards Barbican, resolutely turning my gaze from the bakers' shops, (it was, in my hungry condition, no easy matter to do so,) and with my mind bent on luxuries. There was at that time a little old-fash-. ioned shop in Barbican where jams and preserves were sold. It was a wholesale sort of a shop, and the jams were deposited in great gallon jars, each one of which was ticketed with the price per pound of its contents. One in particular took my fancy; it was labelled "greengage," and the mouth of the jar was deliciously smeared with it. Eighteenpence a pound this jar was marked, and after working a difficult sum in long division on my fingers, I discovered that two ounces of it would come to twopence farthing. This was an insurmountable difficulty. True, I might go in and ask for twopen'orth. Twopence was a goodish bit of money. It wasn't like going in and I daresay I sat there-on the second bar, with asking for a ha'porth. "Two pen'orth of greenmy legs dangling towards the path, my body with-gage jam, please." And, after this brief rein the pen, and my arms resting on the top bar-hearsal, I stepped firmly to the shop door, but for half-an-hour or more, trying hard to think of my affairs, leaving the "home" aspect quite out of the question; but it was of no use: the dark- "Now be off," exclaimed the old woman beer it got the hungrier I grew. I found myself longing to the shop, and who, it seems, had misthinking more and more on what would be my taken her customer. "I've been watching you probable fate if I did go home. I called to my these ten minutes, you little prig," and she slammind the most severe whacking I had ever re-med the door hard and put the catch on. ceived, with how much it hurt, and whether, supposing on this occasion I got double, (that was the least I could expect,) I could possibly stand it. I really believe that I had almost convinced myself that I could, when suddenly I felt something touch my hand, and looking up, saw a gentleman holding two penny-pieces between his finger and thumb. “Here, you poor little wretch," said he, "take this and buy bread with it;" and before I could had hardly placed a foot on the threshold than I received a box on the ear that sent me reeling. Hard as I thought my luck at the time, I have no doubt that the old woman did me a real service. What did I want with greengage jam? It was as much as anything out of wanton malice towards my benefactor that I thought of buying it, and I was very properly checked, and at the same time punished. No such proper reflections were mine at that time, however; indeed, I am ashamed to confess that it was when I had rushed vengefully into the road to find a convenient |