Tommy looked down the stair, and no one was in sight. "I"ll let yer pray here," he whispered, "and you can say I have twopence. But be quick, and do it standing."
Perhaps Mrs. Sandys had been thinking that when Hogmanay came her children might have no mother to bring presents to, for on their return to the room her eyes followed them woefully, and a shudder of apprehension shook her torn frame. Tommy gave Elspeth a look that meant "I"m sure there"s something queer about her."
There was also something queer about himself, which at this time had the strangest gallop. It began one day with a series of morning calls from Shovel, who suddenly popped his head over the top of the door (he was standing on the handle), roared "Roastbeef!" in the manner of a railway porter announcing the name of a station, and then at once withdrew.
He returned presently to say that vain must be all attempts to wheedle his secret from him, and yet again to ask irritably why Tommy was not coming out to hear all about it. Then did Tommy desert Elspeth, and on the stair Shovel showed him a yellow card with this printed on it: "S.R.J.C.--Supper Ticket;" and written beneath, in a lady"s hand: "Admit Joseph Salt." The letters, Shovel explained, meant Society for the somethink of Juvenile Criminals, and the toffs what ran it got hold of you when you came out of quod. Then if you was willing to repent they wrote down your name and the place what you lived at in a book, and one of them came to see yer and give yer a ticket for the blow-out night.
This was blow-out night, and that were Shovel"s ticket. He had bought it from Hump Salt for fourpence. What you get at the blow-out was roast-beef, plum-duff, and an orange; but when Hump saw the fourpence he could not wait.
A favor was asked of Tommy. Shovel had been told by Hump that it was the custom of the toffs to sit beside you and question you about your crimes, and lacking the imagination that made Tommy such an ornament to the house, the chances were that he would flounder in his answers and be ejected. Hump had pointed this out to him after pocketing the fourpence. Would Tommy, therefore, make up things for him to say; reward, the orange.
This was a proud moment for Tommy, as Shovel"s knowledge of crime was much more extensive than his own, though they had both studied it in the pictures of a lively newspaper subscribed to by Shovel, senior. He became patronizing at once and rejected the orange as insufficient.
Then suppose, after he got into the hall, Shovel dropped his ticket out at the window; Tommy could pick it up, and then it would admit him also.
Tommy liked this, but foresaw a danger: the ticket might be taken from Shovel at the door, just as they took them from you at that singing thing in the church he had attended with young Petey.
So help Shovel"s davy, there was no fear of this. They were superior toffs, what trusted to your honor.
Would Shovel swear to this?
He would.
But would he swear dagont?
He swore dagont; and then Tommy had him. As he was so sure of it, he could not object to Tommy"s being the one who dropped the ticket out at the window?
Shovel did object for a time, but after a wrangle he gave up the ticket, intending to take it from Tommy when primed with the necessary tale. So they parted until evening, and Tommy returned to Elspeth, secretive but elated. For the rest of the day he was in thought, now waggling his head smugly over some dark, unutterable design and again looking a little scared. In growing alarm she watched his face, and at last she slipped upon her knees, but he had her up at once and said, reproachfully:
"It were me as teached yer to pray, and now yer prays for me! That"s fine treatment!"
Nevertheless, after his mother"s return, just before he stole out to join Shovel, he took Elspeth aside and whispered to her, nervously:
"You can pray for me if you like, for, oh, Elspeth; I"m thinking as I"ll need it sore!" And sore he needed it before the night was out.
CHAPTER VIII
THE BOY WITH TWO MOTHERS
"I love my dear father and my dear mother and all the dear little kids at "ome. You are a kind laidy or gentleman. I love yer. I will never do it again, so help me bob. Amen."
This was what Shovel muttered to himself again and again as the two boys made their way across the lamp-lit Hungerford Bridge, and Tommy asked him what it meant.
"My old gal learned me that; she"s deep," Shovel said, wiping the words off his mouth with his sleeve.
"But you got no kids at "ome!" remonstrated Tommy. (Ameliar was now in service.)
Shovel turned on him with the fury of a mother protecting her young.
"Don"t you try for to knock none on it out," he cried, and again fell a-mumbling.
Said Tommy, scornfully: "If you says it all out at one bang you"ll be done at the start."
Shovel sighed.
"And you should blubber when yer says it," added Tommy, who could laugh or cry merely because other people were laughing or crying, or even with less reason, and so naturally that he found it more difficult to stop than to begin. Shovel was the taller by half a head, and irresistible with his fists, but to-night Tommy was master.
"You jest stick to me, Shovel," he said airily. "Keep a grip on my hand, same as if yer was Elspeth."
"But what was we copped for, Tommy?" entreated humble Shovel.
Tommy asked him if he knew what a butler was, and Shovel remembered, confusedly, that there had been a portrait of a butler in his father"s news-sheet.
"Well, then," said Tommy, inspired by this same source, "there"s a room a butler has, and it is a pantry, so you and me we crawled through the winder and we opened the door to the gang. You and me was copped. They catched you below the table and me stabbing the butler."
"It was me what stabbed the butler," Shovel interposed, jealously.
"How could you do it, Shovel?"
"With a knife, I tell yer!"
"Why, you didn"t have no knife," said Tommy, impatiently.
This crushed Shovel, but he growled sulkily:
"Well, I bit him in the leg."
"Not you," said selfish Tommy. "You forgets about repenting, and if I let yer bite him, you would brag about it. It"s safer without, Shovel."
Perhaps it was. "How long did I get in quod, then, Tommy?"
"Fourteen days."
"So did you?" Shovel said, with quick anxiety.
"I got a month," replied Tommy, firmly.
Shovel roared a word that would never have admitted him to the hall.
Then, "I"m as game as you, and gamer," he whined.
"But I"m better at repenting. I tell yer, I"ll cry when I"m repenting."
Tommy"s face lit up, and Shovel could not help saying, with a curious look at it:
"You--you ain"t like any other cove I knows," to which Tommy replied, also in an awe-struck voice:
"I"m so queer, Shovel, that when I thinks "bout myself I"m--I"m sometimes near feared."