Sturdy and Strong

"You heard what he said, George?"

"Oh, mother, mother!"

"Don't sob so, my boy; he is right. I have seen it coming a long time, and, hard as it seems, it will be better. There is no disgrace in it. I have tried my best, and if my health had not broken down we might have managed, but you see it was not to be. I shall not mind it, dear; it is really only for your sake that I care about it at all."

The boy had ceased sobbing, and sat now with a white set face.

"Mother, it will break my heart to think that I cannot keep you from this. If we could only have managed for a year or two I could have earned more then; but to think of you-you in the workhouse!"

"In a workhouse infirmary, my boy," his mother said gently. "You see it is not as if it were from any fault of ours. We have done our best. You and I have managed for two years; but what with my health and my eyes breaking down we can do so no longer. I hope it will not be for long, dear. You see I shall have rest and quiet, and I hope I shall soon be able to be out again."

"Not soon, mother. The doctor said you ought not to use your eyes for months."

"Even months pass quickly, George, when one has hope. I have felt this coming so long that I shall be easier and happier now it has come. After all, what is a workhouse infirmary but a hospital, and it would not seem so very dreadful to you my going into a hospital; the difference is only in name; both are, after all, charities, but the one is kept up out of subscriptions, the other from the rates."

His mother's words conveyed but little comfort to George Andrews. He had just come in from his work, and had heard what the parish doctor had told his mother.

"I can do nothing for you here, Mrs. Andrews. You must have rest and quiet for your eyes, and not only that, but you must have strengthening food. It is no use my blinking the truth. It is painful for you, I know. I can well understand that; but I see no other way. If you refuse to go I won't answer for your life."

"I will go, doctor," she had answered quietly. "I know that it will be best. It will be a blow to my boy, but I see no other way."

"If you don't want your boy to be alone in the world, ma'am, you will do as I advise you. I will go round in the morning and get you the order of admission, and as I shall be driving out that way I will, if you like, take you myself."

"Thank you, doctor; you are very good. Yes, I will be ready in the morning, and I thank you for your offer."

"Very well, then, that's settled," the doctor said briskly. "At ten o'clock I will be here."

Although a little rough in manner, Dr. Jeffries was a kind-hearted and humane man.

"Poor woman," he said to himself as he went downstairs, "it is hard for her. It is easy to see that she is a lady, and a thorough lady too; but what can I do for her! I might get her a little temporary help, but that would be of no use--she is completely broken down with anxiety and insufficient food, and unless her eyes have a long holiday she will lose her sight. No, there's nothing else for it, but it is hard."

It was hard. Mrs. Andrews was, as the doctor said, a lady. She had lost both her parents while she was at school. She had no near relations, and as she was sixteen when her mother died she had remained at school finishing her education and teaching the younger children. Then she had obtained a situation as governess in a gentleman's family, and two years afterwards had married a young barrister who was a frequent visitor at the house.

Mr. Andrews was looked upon as a rising man, and for the first seven or eight years of her marriage his wife's life had been a very happy one. Then her husband was prostrated by a fever which he caught in one of the midland towns while on circuit, and although he partially recovered he was never himself again. His power of work seemed to be lost; a languor which he could not overcome took possession of him. A troublesome cough ere long attacked him, and two years later Mrs. Andrews was a widow, and her boy, then nine years old, an orphan.

During the last two years of his life Mr. Andrews had earned but little in his profession. The comfortable house which he occupied had been given up, and they had removed to one much smaller. But in spite of this, debts mounted up, and when, after his death, the remaining furniture was sold and everything settled, there remained only about two hundred pounds. Mrs. Andrews tried to get some pupils among her late husband's friends, but during the last two years she had lost sight of many of these, and now met with but poor success among the others. She was a quiet and retiring woman, and shrank from continuous solicitations, and at the end of three years she found her little store exhausted.

Hitherto she had kept George at school, but could no longer do so, and, giving up her lodging in Brompton, went down to Croydon, where someone had told her that they thought she would have a better chance of obtaining pupils, but the cards which some of the tradesmen allowed her to put in the window led to no result, and finding this to be the case she applied at one of the milliner's for work. This she obtained, and for a year supported herself and her boy by needlework.

From the time when George left school she had gone on teaching him his lessons; but on the day when he was thirteen years old he declared that he would no longer submit to his mother working for both of them, and, setting out, called at shop after shop inquiring if they wanted an errand-boy. He succeeded at last in getting a place at a grocer's where he was to receive three shillings a week and his meals, going home to sleep at night in the closet-like little attic adjoining the one room which his mother could now afford.

For a while they were more comfortable than they had been for some time; now that his mother had no longer George to feed, her earnings and the three shillings he brought home every Saturday night enabled them to live in comparative ease, and on Sunday something like a feast was always prepared. But six months later Mrs. Andrews felt her eyesight failing, the lids became inflamed, and a dull aching pain settled in the eyeballs. Soon she could only work for a short time together, her earnings became smaller and smaller, and her employers presently told her that she kept the work so long in hand that they could no longer employ her. There was now only George's three shillings a week to rely upon, and this was swallowed up by the rent. In despair she had applied to the parish doctor about her eyes. For a fortnight he attended her, and at the end of that time had peremptorily given the order of which she had told her son.

To her it was a relief; she had seen that it must come. Piece by piece every article of clothing she possessed, save those she wore, had been pawned for food, and every resource was now exhausted. She was worn out with the struggle, and the certainty of rest and food overcame her repugnance to the house. For George's sake too, much as she knew he would feel her having to accept such a refuge, she was glad that the struggle was at an end. The lad had for the last six months suffered greatly for her sake. Every meal to which he sat down at his employer's seemed to choke him as he contrasted it with the fare to which she was reduced, although, as far as possible, she had concealed from him how sore was her strait.

George cried himself to sleep that night, and he could scarce speak when he said good-by to his mother in the morning, for he could not tell when he should see her again.

"You will stop where you are, my boy, will you not?"

"I cannot promise, mother. I don't know yet what I shall do; but please don't ask me to promise anything. You must let me do what I think best. I have got to make a home for you when you are cured. I am fourteen now, and am as strong as most boys of my age. I ought to be able to earn a shilling a day somehow, and with seven shillings a week, mother, and you just working a little, you know, so as not to hurt your eyes, we ought to be able to do. Don't you bother about me, mother. I want to try anyhow what I can do till you come out. When you do, then I will do whatever you tell me; that's fair, isn't it?"

Mrs. Andrews would have remonstrated, but he said:

"Well, mother, you see at the worst I can get a year's character from Dutton, so that if I can't get anything else to do I can get the same sort of place again, and as I am a year older than I was when he took me, and can tie up parcels neatly now, I ought to get a little more anyhow. You see I shall be safe enough, and though I have never grumbled, you know, mother-have I?-I think I would rather do anything than be a grocer's boy. I would rather, when I grow up, be a bricklayer's laborer, or a plowman, or do any what I call man's work, than be pottering about behind a counter, with a white apron on, weighing out sugar and currants."

"I can't blame you, George," Mrs. Andrews said with a sigh. "It's natural, my boy. If I get my eyesight and my health again, when you grow up to be a man we will lay by a little money, and you and I will go out together to one of the colonies. It will be easier to rise again there than here, and with hard work both of us might surely hope to get on. There must be plenty of villages in Australia and Canada where I could do well with teaching, and you could get work in whatever way you may be inclined to. So, my boy, let us set that before us. It will be something to hope for and work for, and will cheer us to go through whatever may betide us up to that time."

"Yes, mother," George said. "It will be comfort indeed to have something to look forward to. Nothing can comfort me much to-day; but if anything could it would be some such plan as that."

The last words he said to his mother as, blinded with tears, he kissed her before starting to work, were:

"I shall think of our plan every day, and look forward to that more than anything else in the world-next to your coming to me again."

At ten o'clock Dr. Jeffries drove up to Mrs. Andrews' humble lodging in a brougham instead of his ordinary gig, having borrowed the carriage from one of the few of his patients who kept such a vehicle, on purpose to take Mrs. Andrews, for she was so weak and worn that he was sure she would not be able to sit upright in a gig for the three miles that had to be traversed. He managed in the course of his rounds to pass the workhouse again in the afternoon, and brought George, before he left work, a line written in pencil on a leaf torn from his pocketbook:

"My darling, I am very comfortable. Everything is clean and nice, and the doctor and people kind. Do not fret about me.-Your loving mother."

Although George's expressed resolution of leaving his present situation, and seeking to earn his living in some other way, caused Mrs. Andrews much anxiety, she had not sought strongly to dissuade him from it. No doubt it would be wiser for him to stay in his present situation, where he was well treated and well fed, and it certainly seemed improbable to her that he would be able to get a better living elsewhere. Still she could not blame him for wishing at least to try. She herself shared to some extent his prejudice against the work in which he was employed. There is no disgrace in honest work; but she felt that she would rather see him engaged in hard manual labor than as a shop boy. At any rate, as he said, if he failed he could come back again to Croydon, and, with a year's character from his present employer, would probably be able to obtain a situation similar to that which he now held. She was somewhat comforted, too, by a few words the doctor had said to her during their drive.

"I think you are fortunate in your son, Mrs. Andrews. He seems to me a fine steady boy. If I can, in any way, do him a good turn while you are away from him, I will."

George remained for another month in his situation, for he knew that it would never do to start on his undertaking penniless. At the end of that time, having saved up ten shillings, and having given notice to his employer, he left the shop for the last time, and started to walk to London. It was not until he began to enter the crowded streets that he felt the full magnitude of his undertaking. To be alone in London, a solitary atom in the busy mass of humanity, is a trying situation even for a man; to a boy of fourteen it is terrible. Buying a penny roll, George sat down to eat it in one of the niches of a bridge over the river, and then kneeling up watched the barges and steamers passing below him.

Had it not been for his mother, his first thought, like that of most English boys thrown on the world, would have been to go to sea; but this idea he had from the first steadily set aside as out of the question. His plan was to obtain employment as a boy in some manufacturing work, for he thought that there, by steadiness and perseverance, he might make his way.

On one thing he was resolved. He would make his money last as long as possible. Three penny-worth of bread a day would, he calculated, be sufficient for his wants. As to sleeping, he thought he might manage to sleep anywhere; it was summer time and the nights were warm. He had no idea what the price of a bed would be, or how to set about getting a lodging. He did not care how roughly he lived so that he could but make his money last. The first few days he determined to look about him. Something might turn up. If it did not he would set about getting a place in earnest. He had crossed Waterloo Bridge, and, keeping straight on, found himself in Covent Garden, where he was astonished and delighted at the quantities of fruit, vegetables, and flowers.

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."

"Is there time to eat our bread and cheese?" George asked.

"No, we had better eat it when we get down to the market; come along."

George at once rose, shook the hay off his clothes, and descended the ladder, Bill leading the way. There was no one in the stable, and the yard was also empty. On reaching the market they sat down on two empty baskets, and at once began to eat their bread and cheese.

* * *