Although he twice set out in different directions to explore the streets, he each time returned to Covent Garden. There were many lads of his own age playing about there, and he thought that from them he might get some hints as to how to set about earning a living. They looked ragged and poor enough, but they might be able to tell him something about sleeping, for instance. For although before starting the idea of sleeping anywhere had seemed natural enough, it looked more formidable now that he was face to face with it.
Going to a cook-shop in a street off the market he bought two slices of plum-pudding. He rather grudged the twopence which he paid; but he felt that it might be well laid out. Provided with the pudding he returned to the market, sat himself down on an empty basket, and began to eat slowly and leisurely.
In a short time he noticed a lad of about his own age watching him greedily.
He was far from being a respectable-looking boy. His clothes were ragged, and his toes could be seen through a hole in his boot. He wore neither hat nor cap, and his hair looked as if it had not been combed since the day of his birth. There was a sharp, pinched look on his face. But had he been washed and combed and decently clad he would not have been a bad-looking boy. At any rate George liked his face better than most he had seen in the market, and he longed for a talk with someone. So he held out his other slice of pudding, and said:
"Have a bit?"
"Oh, yes!" the boy replied "Walker, eh?"
"No, I mean it, really. Will you have a bit?"
"No larks?" asked the boy.
"No; no larks. Here you are."
Feeling assured now that no trick was intended the boy approached, took without a word the pudding which George held out, and, seating himself on a basket close to him, took a great bite.
"Where do you live?" George asked, when the slice of pudding had half disappeared.
"Anywheres," the boy replied, waving his hand round.
"I mean, where do you sleep?"
The boy nodded, to intimate that his sleeping-place was included in the general description of his domicile.
"And no one interferes with you?" George inquired.
"The beaks, they moves you on when they ketches you; but ef yer get under a cart or in among the baskets you generally dodges 'em."
"And suppose you want to pay for a place to sleep, where do you go and how much do you pay?"
"Tuppence," the boy said; "or if yer want a first-rate, fourpence. Does yer want to find a crib?" he asked doubtfully, examining his companion.
"Well, yes," George said. "I want to find some quiet place where I can sleep, cheap, you know."
"Out of work?" the boy inquired.
"Yes. I haven't got anything to do at present. I am looking for a place, you know."
"Don't know no one about?"
"No; I have just come in from Croydon."
The boy shook his head.
"Don't know nothing as would suit," he said. "Why, yer'd get them clothes and any money yet had walked off with the wery fust night."
"I should not get a room to myself, I suppose, even for fourpence?" George asked, making a rapid calculation that this would come to two and fourpence per week, as much as his mother had paid for a comparatively comfortable room in Croydon.
The boy opened his eyes in astonishment at his companion requiring a room for himself.
"Lor' bless yer, yer'd have a score of them with yer!"
"I don't care about a bed," George said. "Just some place to sleep in. Just some straw in any quiet corner."
This seemed more reasonable to the boy, and he thought the matter over.
"Well," he said at last, "I knows of a place where they puts up the hosses of the market carts. I knows a hostler there. Sometimes when it's wery cold he lets me sleep up in the loft. Aint it warm and comfortable just! I helps him with the hosses sometimes, and that's why. I will ax him if yer likes."
George assented at once. His ideas as to the possibility of sleeping in the open air had vanished when he saw the surroundings, and a bed in a quiet loft seemed to him vastly better than sleeping in a room with twenty others.
"How do you live?" he asked the lad, "and what's your name?"
"They calls me the Shadder," the boy said rather proudly; "but my real name's Bill."
"Why do they call you the Shadow?" George asked.
"'Cause the bobbies finds it so hard to lay hands on me," Bill replied.
"But what do they want to lay hands on you for?" George asked.
"Why, for bagging things, in course," Bill replied calmly.
"Bagging things? Do you mean stealing?" George said, greatly shocked.
"Well, not regular prigging," the Shadow replied; "not wipes, yer know, nor tickers, nor them kind of things. I aint never prigged nothing of that kind."
"Well, what is it then you do prig?" George asked, mystified.
"Apples or cabbages, or a bunch of radishes, onions sometimes, or 'taters. That aint regular prigging, you know."
"Well, it seems to me the same sort of thing," George said, after a pause.
"I tell yer it aint the same sort of thing at all," the Shadow said angrily. "Everyone as aint a fool knows that taters aint wipes, and no one can't say as a apple and a ticker are the same."
"No, not the same," George agreed; "but you see one is just as much stealing as the other."
"No, it aint," the boy reasserted. "One is the same as money and t'other aint. I am hungry and I nips a apple off a stall. No one aint the worse for it. You don't suppose as they misses a apple here? Why, there's wagon-loads of 'em, and lots of 'em is rotten. Well, it aint no more if I takes one than if it was rotten. Is it now?"
George thought there was a difference, but he did not feel equal to explaining it.
"The policemen must think differently," he said at last, "else they wouldn't be always trying to catch you."
"Who cares for the bobbies?" Bill said contemptuously. "I don't; and I don't want no more jaw with you about it. If yer don't likes it, yer leaves it. I didn't ask for yer company, did I? So now then."
George had really taken a fancy to the boy, and moreover he saw that in the event of a quarrel his chance of finding a refuge for the night was small. In his sense of utter loneliness in the great city he was loath to break with the only acquaintance he had made.
"I didn't mean to offend you, Bill," he said; "only I was sorry to hear you say you took things. It seems to me you might get into trouble; and it would be better after all to work for a living."
"What sort of work?" Bill said derisively. "Who's agoing to give me work? Does yer think I have only got to walk into a shop and ask for 'ployment? They wouldn't want to know nothing about my character, I suppose? nor where I had worked before? nor where my feyther lived? nor nothing? Oh, no, of course not! It's blooming easy to get work about here; only got to ax for it, that's all. Good wages and all found, that's your kind."
"I don't suppose it's easy," George said; "but it seems to me people could get something to do if they tried."
"Tried!" the boy said bitterly. "Do yer think we don't try! Why, we are always trying to earn a copper or two. Why, we begins at three o'clock in the morning when the market-carts come in, and we goes on till they comes out of that there theater at night, just trying to pick up a copper. Sometimes one does and sometimes one doesn't. It's a good day, I tell you, when we have made a tanner by the end of it. Don't tell me! And now as to this ere stable; yer means it?"
"Yes," George said; "certainly I mean it."
"Wery well then, you be here at this corner at nine o'clock. I will go before that and square it with Ned. That's the chap I was speaking of."
"I had better give you something to give him," George said. "Will a shilling do?"
"Yes, a bob will do for three or four nights. Are you going to trust me with it?"
"Of course I am," George replied. "I am sure you wouldn't be so mean as to do me out of it; besides, you told me that you never stole money and those sort of things."
"It aint everyone as would trust me with a bob for all that," Bill replied; "and yer are running a risk, yer know, and I tells yer if yer goes on with that sort of game yer'll get took in rarely afore yer've done. Well, hand it over. I aint a-going to bilk yer."
The Shadow spoke carelessly, but this proof of confidence on the part of his companion really touched him, and as he went off he said to himself, "He aint a bad sort, that chap, though he is so precious green. I must look arter him a bit and see he don't get into no mischief."
George, on his part, as he walked away down into the Strand again, felt that he had certainly run a risk in thus intrusting a tenth of his capital to his new acquaintance; but the boy's face and manner had attracted him, and he felt that, although the Shadow's notions of right and wrong might be of a confused nature, he meant to act straight toward him.
George passed the intervening hours before the time named for his meeting in Covent Garden in staring into the shop windows in the Strand, and in wondering at the constant stream of vehicles and foot passengers flowing steadily out westward. He was nearly knocked under the wheels of the vehicles a score of times from his ignorance as to the rule of the road, and at last he was so confused by the jostling and pushing that he was glad to turn down a side street and to sit down for a time on a doorstep.
When nine o'clock approached he went into a baker's shop and bought a loaf, which would, he thought, do for supper and breakfast for himself and his companion. Having further invested threepence in cheese, he made his way up to the market.
The Shadow was standing at the corner whistling loudly.
"Oh, here yer be! That's all right; come along. I have squared Ned, and it's all right."
He led the way down two or three streets and then stopped at a gateway.
"You stop here," he said, "and I will see as there aint no one but Ned about."
He returned in a minute.
"It's all clear! Ned, he's a-rubbing down a hoss; he won't take no notice of yer as yer pass. He don't want to see yer, yer know, 'cause in case anyone comed and found yer up there he could swear he never saw yer go in, and didn't know nothing about yer. I will go with yer to the door, and then yer will see a ladder in the corner; if yer whip up that yer'll find it all right up there."
"But you are coming too, aint you?" George asked.
"Oh, no, I aint a-coming. Yer don't want a chap like me up there. I might pick yer pocket, yer know; besides I aint your sort."
"Oh, nonsense!" George said. "I should like to have you with me, Bill; I should really. Besides, what's the difference between us? We have both got to work for ourselves and make our way in the world."
"There's a lot of difference. Yer don't talk the way as I do; yer have been brought up different. Don't tell me."
"I may have been brought up differently, Bill. I have been fortunate there; but now, you see, I have got to get my living in the best way I can, and if I have had a better education than you have, you know ever so much more about London and how to get your living than I do, so that makes us quits."
"Oh, wery well," Bill said; "it's all the same to this child. So if yer aint too proud, here goes."
He led the way down a stable yard, past several doors, showing the empty stalls which would be all filled when the market carts arrived. At the last door on the right he stopped. George looked in. At the further end a man was rubbing down a horse by the faint light of a lantern, the rest of the stable was in darkness.
"This way," Bill whispered.
Keeping close behind him, George entered the stable. The boy stopped in the corner.
"Here's the ladder. I will go up fust and give yer a hand when yer gets to the top."
George stood quiet until his companion had mounted, and then ascended the ladder, which was fixed against the wall. Presently a voice whispered in his ear:
"Give us your hand. Mind how yer puts your foot."
In a minute he was standing in the loft. His companion drew him along in the darkness, and in a few steps arrived at a pile of hay.
"There yer are," Bill said in a low voice; "yer 'ave only to make yourself comfortable there. Now mind you don't fall down one of the holes into the mangers."
"I wish we had a little light," George said, as he ensconced himself in the hay.
"I will give you some light in a minute," Bill said, as he left his side, and directly afterwards a door opened and the light of a gaslight in the yard streamed in.
"That's where they pitches the hay in," Bill said as he rejoined him. "I shuts it up afore I goes to sleep, 'cause the master he comes out sometimes when the carts comes in, and there would be a blooming row if he saw it open; but we are all right now."
"That's much nicer," George said. "Now here's a loaf I brought with me. We will cut it in half and put by a half for the morning, and eat the other half between us now, and I have got some cheese here too."
"That's tiptop!" the boy said. "Yer're a good sort, I could see that, and I am pretty empty, I am, for I aint had nothing except that bit of duff yer gave me since morning, and I only had a crust then. 'Cept for running against you I aint been lucky to-day. Couldn't get a job nohows, and it aint for want of trying neither."
For some minutes the boys ate in silence. George had given much the largest portion to his companion, for he himself was too dead tired to be very hungry. When he had finished, he said:
"Look here, Bill; we will talk in the morning. I am so dead beat I can scarcely keep my eyes open, so I will just say my prayers and go off to sleep."
"Say your prayers!" Bill said in astonishment. "Do yer mean to say as yer says prayers!"
"Of course I do," George replied; "don't you?"
"Never said one in my life," Bill said decidedly; "don't know how, don't see as it would do no good ef I did."
"It would do good, Bill," George said. "I hope some day you will think differently, and I will teach you some you will like."
"I don't want to know none," Bill said positively. "A missionary chap, he came and prayed with an old woman I lodged with once. I could not make head nor tail of it, and she died just the same, so you see what good did it do her?"
But George was too tired to enter upon a theological argument. He was already half asleep, and Bill's voice sounded a long way off.
"Good-night," he muttered; "I will talk to you in the morning," and in another minute he was fast asleep.
Bill took an armful of hay and shook it lightly over his companion; then he closed the door of the loft and threw himself on the hay, and was soon also sound asleep. When George woke in the morning the daylight was streaming in through the cracks of the door. His companion was gone. He heard the voices of several men in the yard, while a steady champing noise and an occasional shout or the sound of a scraping on the stones told him the stalls below were all full now.
George felt that he had better remain where he was. Bill had told him the evening before that the horses and carts generally set out again at about nine o'clock, and he thought he had better wait till they had gone before he slipped down below. Closing his eyes he was very soon off to sleep again. When he woke, Bill was sitting by his side looking at him.
"Well, you are a oner to sleep," the boy said. "Why, it's nigh ten o'clock, and it's time for us to be moving. Ned will be going off in a few minutes, and the stables will be locked up till the evening."