Fain would Arthur have visited the friendly corner again on the following night, but delicacy withheld him — that fine element of his nature which differentiated him from the ordinary street Arab. It being Christmas Day, Mrs. Blatherwick had exerted herself to induce her hopeful son to make the most of the propitious season; but she soon became aware that the jovialities of the previous evening had rendered Bill absolutely incapable of standing upright, to say nothing of melodiously declaring his trust in Providence in the wonted manner. So she very reluctantly allowed him to remain all day in his comatose condition, and revenged herself by setting Arthur to perform, for several hours, some of the hardest and most menial labour her ingenuity could suggest.

But at night the boy became once more free, and again wandered about the streets. About nine o’clock he watched, from afar off, the baked-potato man wheel up his oven and settle down at the wonted corner, but he approached no nearer.

During the next few days Bill Blatherwick once more resumed his professional duties, and from morning to night Arthur guided his blind and maimed parent along the snowbound streets, suffering the extremes of cold and hunger, as well as all the tortures which the brutal ingenuity of his master could conceive, and singing a hundred times a day the hymn about the lilies of the field and the birds of the air.

Very frequently a passer-by would turn to look at his pale and wan features, admiring the beauty of their outlines, and the thick golden hair which fell almost to his shoulders and was apparent through the rents of his cap.

Bill soon learned the value of the boy’s personal appearance; he had gained twice as much money daily since Arthur had been with him than he had previously been accustomed to. Yet he seemed every day to grow more malicious towards him, taking a keener delight in making him endure hunger and thirst, at times almost laming him with savage kicks or blows, and always threatening the most terrific penalties if ever he should complain of the treatment he received.

Arthur’s nature was long-suffering, but not unconscious of resentment, and at length Bill perpetrated on him a piece of cruelty which roused all the indignation lurking in his child’s heart, and for the moment revealed an intensity of passion in his character which had never before made itself known.

Bill was partaking of a glass of his favourite beverage in a public-house one noon and had left Arthur standing outside. The boy was tortured with a terrible thirst, of which he had not dared to complain to Bill; but now that the latter’s back was turned he seized the opportunity, and bent to drink the puddly water of a horse-trough which stood at the edge of the pavement. He was in the midst of a long draught when a hand suddenly descended on the back of his neck, and, before he was aware, plunged him overhead in the trough. The street was a small one, and Bill had taken advantage of its loneliness to indulge himself in a congenial amusement.

But he had driven his jocosity too far. Starting to his feet, the boy turned and sprang like a young leopard upon his persecutor; sprang at his head, clutched him round the neck, and fixed with his teeth fiercely in the bully’s cheek, whilst with his feet he belaboured the mendicant’s lower extremities.

Bill roared like a bull, thus drawing forth several men from the public-house, who laughed heartily, and began to make bets on the event of the struggle. It was, of course, too uneven for the result to be long doubtful. For a moment Arthur’s madness gave him an energy which repelled all the man’s efforts to free himself; he ground his teeth deep into the flesh with the ferocity of a wild beast.

But in a few minutes Bill shook him off with a desperate effort, dashed him on the ground, trod upon him with his heavy clogs, and began to beat him about the head with his stick, when the men from the public-house interfered and stayed his hand. It was then found that the boy had fainted. He was carried into the house, and Bill followed him.

Whilst Arthur was being attended to by a compassionate barmaid, the mendicant bound up the wound in his cheek as well as he could, sticking-plaster having been forthcoming (for a due consideration) from the landlord. It did not appear very serious; Bill was in the habit of receiving far worse damage than this in his nightly brawls. But the exhaustion of the affair had naturally resulted in thirst, and Bill was easily persuaded by the other men present to resume his previous seat and call for a copious joram of the “same as before.”

Arthur, on recovering, was accommodated with a seat between his master and the wall, where he sat with his eyes closed and his face deadly pale, the constant object of Bill’s ominous observation.

So productive of amusing conversation was the little episode that the shades of the December night had already begun to darken upon the City before Bill could prevail upon himself to leave his place and bid Arthur precede him into the street. The mendicant’s walk was not quite so steady as it might have been, and there was a curious look in his bloodshot eyes when he regarded his little companion, which suggested the possibility of drink having made his usually malicious nature absolutely dangerous.

It was against Bill’s ordinary habits to partake of liquor in the daytime; the practice was, to say the least of it, destructive to the interests of his profession. When he once began to drink it was extremely difficult for him to abstain till he had reached the state of insensibility, and such proved the case on the present occasion.

On leaving the public-house he had promised himself that he would avoid entering another till he had reached home and taken measures for the suitable punishment of his assailant. But he had already taken too much to allow of his adhering to a resolution.

They were threading the neighbourhood of Saffron Hill on their way citywards (Bill always preferred these backways to the more open thoroughfares), when he was hailed by a “pal” from the doorway of a dram-shop, and, wholly unable to resist the temptation, he dragged Arthur along after him (when he reached these localities he always threw aside the various items of his disguise) and entered.

More than an hour was spent here, and before he departed Bill was completely drunk. He told the story of the attack made upon him, and amused himself and his companions by occasionally administering severe blows to Arthur either with his stick or his fist.

The boy’s blood boiled within him, but he remained silent and motionless. When at length they once more issued into the street Bill staggered along in the darkness, supporting himself on the boy’s shoulder, shouting out curses with what voice he had left, and perpetually slipping over the ice and snow, which the bitter frost-wind bound harder every moment on the narrow paths. They lost their way, for Arthur was totally strange in the neighbourhood, and Bill was quite incapable of guiding himself.

When at length they turned into an alley darker than any yet, the passion brooding in Arthur’s breast rose lightning-like to his brain in the form of a fierce thought. Glancing around, he saw at once that not a soul was near. It needed but a slight push — a weaker hand than Arthur’s would have sufficed — and the sot reeled and fell heavily to the ground.

Acting in pursuance of instinct rather than upon deliberate reflection, the boy groped for the leather bag which held the day’s harvest of coppers, wrenched it in a moment off the drunkard’s neck, and bounded away through the darkness.

Not for a moment did he look back, but pursued his breathless course along streets he had no knowledge of, turning out of one into another from a blind impulse which bade him thus avoid pursuit. He fancied he could hear Bill’s voice yelling after him; once or twice he seemed to hear rapid footsteps close upon his heels; but he never turned to look round. He did not stop in his headlong course till, slipping on the ice, he fell violently, and lay almost senseless on the pavement.

After a few moments he crept into a doorway, and there lay panting. With this one great effort of escaping his strength seemed to have deserted him; he felt unable to rise to his feet. He was not cold now he did not feel hungry; all his body seemed consumed with a terrific thirst. On looking round him he saw the flaring front of a public-house at a few yards’ distance, and a longing for drink — drink warm and sweet, like that they had given him when he recovered from his fainting fit — came irresistibly upon him.

With trembling hands he hid the wallet as well as he could under his rags, having first taken out a few coppers, which he held clenched in his fist. After one or two efforts he succeeded in staggering to his feet, crossed the road, and, hesitating but for a moment, pushed open the door of the public-house and entered the bar. Pressing through a crowd of drinkers, he succeeded in giving an order which he had often heard Bill give, and was quickly supplied with a smoking tumbler.

The men around him looked at the slight, childish form, and began to laugh and joke. One of them, who seemed good-tempered in his cups, lifted the boy on to his knee and played with his fine hair, whilst another proposed to “stand” him another glass. Arthur wished for nothing better. His tongue was now loosened, and his native timidity had given place to a boldness which shrank from nothing. He drank the second glass, and after that a third, then offered to pay for glasses round to the group of men who were amusing themselves with him. This nearly exhausted his stock of coppers. Then he sang, he danced, he shouted; and at length, though quite unconscious of how or why it came about, he felt a heavy grasp on his shoulder, and the next moment found himself lying on the pavement in the open air.

For a moment the recollection of Bill Blatherwick flashed upon his mind, and, starting to his feet, he endeavoured to run. Again and again he fell his whole length, the last time he did so, feeling something warm on his face, which he tried to, wipe off with his hand, and became half conscious that it was blood.

Then a long period seemed to pass, in which he was conscious of nothing; and after that he suddenly found himself standing by a small fire, with someone speaking to him. There was a pleasant. smell in the air, too, and at length he recognized his friend the baked-potato man.

“An’ what a’ you been a doin’ of, eh?” asked the man, eyeing Arthur suspiciously. “Come, you get orff ‘ome, d’ye ‘ear?”

The child endeavoured to reply in a long, stammering account of his sufferings, of the cruelties he had received at the hands of the Blatherwicks, of many other things that were nothing at all to the purpose, talking all the time as if in a dream, and once on the point of falling into the red-hot grate, had not the man held him up. Then again he became quite unconscious of everything, and so he remained for many hours.

When he once more came to his senses it was about nine o’clock on New Year’s morning. He was lying on a straw mattress, well covered up with warm clothes, in a little room directly under the rafters of the house.

It was a fine morning, and the sun, though with but little warmth in its beams, threw a cheerful light on a prospect of chimneys and slated roofs. Arthur looked around him in surprise and fright, for the room was quite strange to him. He rose with difficulty to his feet, and, as the sunlight met his eyes, staggered back as if suddenly smitten on the head. His senses reeled; his mouth and throat were so parched that he could scarcely fetch his breath; he felt so utterly, miserably ill that, falling back upon his bed again, he began to moan and cry in the extremity of his suffering.

There was another bed in the room which had evidently been occupied during the night, but beyond this there was no furniture. Outside the window, however, were hung two or three bird-cages containing canaries, which so far enjoyed the sunshine as to be doing their best to sing a little, despite the sharp morning air which ruffled their yellow plumage and made them keep continually hopping about for the sake of warmth. A stronger roulade than usual from one of them had succeeded at length in attracting his attention, when the door suddenly opened, and a man entered, whom he at once recognised as his friend of the baked-potatoes.

“Well, young un, how goes it?” shouted the man in a cheerful voice.

“I feel very bad,” groaned Arthur, in reply. “Where have I got to, sir? This isn’t Mrs. Blatherwick’s, is it?”

The other having reassured him on this point, Arthur was persuaded to dress, an operation which, as may be imagined, did not, in his case, require any great length of time. His friend then conducted him out of the room, and down several flights of dark and creaking stairs, till he found himself in a small parlour, very comfortably furnished, where a bright fire was burning, and the table was covered with preparations for breakfast. Two or three little children were running in and out of the room, all dressed in that humble sort of finery which even the poorest can procure at the cost of a few pence expended in various coloured ribbons, and all evidently in a delighted state of mind highly befitting the morning of a New Year.

At the table sat the father of the family, waited upon by a very young and sickly-looking woman, whom it was hard to believe to be the mother of the boisterous children, though such was the fact. He was a short but broad-shouldered man, with an extremely red face, which would have borne a highly comic expression, had not the absence of one eye given it a touch of repulsiveness. As it was, his countenance was decidedly grotesque, and, as he ate, which he did voraciously, he twisted it into such a variety of extraordinary shapes that, had it not been for the absence of spectators, one would have believed he was doing it to excite amusement. We may as well state at once that his name was Michael Rumball.

The nature of Mr. Rumball’s business was pretty clearly indicated by the objects surrounding him. All round the parlour walls were suspended bird-cages, mostly occupied; some large and evidently used for the purposes of breeding, others only containing a single singing-bird. The room had two doors, one that by which Arthur and his guide had entered, the other looking into the shop, which a glance showed to be filled with all manner of live-stock, not birds alone, but rabbits, hares, guinea-pigs and many other species dear to amateur naturalists. For the locality was Little St. Andrew Street, and Mr. Rumball’s shop was one of many similar for which the neighbour hood is noted. The situation of the parlour, just in the rear of such a miscellaneous collection, certainly had its disadvantages, among them the constant impregnation of the atmosphere with a most potent and peculiar odour; but probably in this matter, as in all others, habit became a second nature, and nobody seemed at all offended by the scents.

“Well, Mike,” exclaimed the baked-potato man, as he drew the boy in by the shoulders and thrust him, with a rough sort of kindness, into a chair, “’ere’s the young shaver as I carried ‘ome last night. And pretty down in the mouth he do look! Cheer up, young ’un!”

The baked-potato man, who rejoiced in the name of Ned Quirk, spoke in a hearty and jovial voice, though the tones were terribly husky. The huskiness was not, as is so often the case, the result of drink, for Ned was a strictly temperate man, but was simply the result of his trade; for, whilst turning an honest penny by his potatoes at night, he exercised during the day the business of a costermonger, hawking vegetables and the like about the streets and thundering out the qualities and prices of his wares in tones which had but few rivals, even among the coster fraternity. To the same cause was due a peculiar twist in his mouth, which gave to his face a curious expression. This slight deformity is no uncommon thing amongst men of his trade, and results from the habit of constant shouting.

“Can you eat a bit?” continued Ned, eyeing the boy with kindly compassion.

“I’m not hungry,” replied Arthur, turning away from the food. “My head’s so bad.”

“Ah!” interposed Mike Rumball, in a cracked voice, with one of his drollest facial twists, “you’ve been a departin’ from the ways of right’ousness, an’ a sittin’ in the seat of the scornful, young un. Come now, hain’t you?”

“Now don’t go on with the boy, Mike, there’s a good fellow,” said Mrs. Rumball, whose maternal heart was touched with pity at Arthur’s sad plight. “I always will say as Ned Quirk is a good-‘arted fellow, an’ it was like him to bring the boy along with him. What’s yer name, my poor boy?”

“Arthur Golding,” replied the boy, continuing to stare in the utmost surprise at all around him.

“Well now, Arthur, you’ll drink a cup o’ tea, and may be you’ll feel better for it. There now.”

Arthur drank the grateful fluid, and after a few minutes certainly did begin to feel better. In the meanwhile the three children had gathered round him, and were watching him curiously as he swallowed the last drop out of the half-pint mug.

“Run out into the street, all o’ you!” cried Mrs. Rumball. “Play there till Mr. Quirk’s ready for you. He won’t be so long I dare say.”

“Not two minutes, young ‘uns,” cried Ned Quirk. “An’ now,” he added, turning to Arthur, “dy yer think as you can find yer way ‘ome, my lad?”

“I — I have no real home, sir,” stammered Arthur, terrified at the idea of being taken back to Mrs. Blatherwick’s.

“How’s that?” broke in Mike. “Foxes has ‘oles, an’ the birds o’ the air has nests, yer know — leastwise most on ’em — an’ I can’t b’lieve as you’re a hexception to the rule.”

Then Arthur took courage and repeated in more connected language what he had already told Ned Quirk half unconsciously on the preceding night, relating all the sufferings he had undergone at the hands of the Blatherwicks, but carefully abstaining from giving precise information as to those amiable persons’ whereabouts, and remaining equally silent on the subject of his brief stay with Mr. Norman.

“It’s a ‘ard case,” said Ned Quirk, reflectively, and he drew on a very big overcoat. “What can we do with the lad, Mike?”

“Well, yer know, Ned, charity covers a multitude o’ sins. Maybe we could find him a job. How old are you, young un?”

“Nearly nine, sir.”

“Hum! Old enough to be gettin’ yer livin’, my lad.”

“I tell you what, Mike,” said Ned Quirk, “I mustn’t keep these ’ere young uns o’ yourn waitin’; they’ll tear me to pieces else. You keep Arthur ’ere till I come back, an’ that’s about four this arternoon, if the weather ‘olds up. Then we’ll talk the matter over. Don’t be afear’d to give him somethin’ to eat; I’ll stand to that, old boy.”

The explanation of Ned Quirk’s hurry was this. In his quality of itinerary tradesman he was possessed of a small cart and a smaller donkey, both of which he was in the habit of utilising on special occasions for the purpose of small pleasure-trips, being most frequently accompanied in the same by the three children of his friend, Michael Rumball. Now, today, being at one and the same time Sunday and New Year’s Day, and the weather being unusually propitious for the time of year, an excursion extraordinary had been planned to no less a distance than Hampstead Heath, with the purpose, as we have heard, of lasting the whole day. The diminutive but well-fed and sprightly-looking donkey had already been standing harnessed at the door for nearly a quarter of an hour, and was evidently growing impatient to show his holiday mettle. So as soon as Ned had wrapped himself in his great coat — which, bye-the-by, had been so often and so variously patched as almost to resemble the coat of many colours worn by Joseph of old — he was dragged to the door by the noisy youngsters, and followed thither at a more leisurely pace by Mr. and Mrs. Rumball. In a minute the children had climbed into the two-wheeled vehicle, ensconcing themselves in the receptacles appropriated on week-days to potatoes, herrings, &c., and now sat hallooing their delight to a whole crowd of dirty-faced little ragamuffins who stood around with envious looks, though the eldest of them did not hesitate to make sarcastic remarks on the general appearance of the turnout. Ned Quirk was not behindhand, but sprang to his wonted seat in front, rested his legs wide apart on the shafts, grasped the rope-reins, twitched the donkey’s cars with a stick of holly, and away they went at a sharp pace, pursued to the end of the street by a swarm of yelling tatterdemalions.

Michael Rumball (who, bye-the-by, had been in his youth a shining light among the Ranter fraternity, and had often uplifted his voice at the street corners, or amid the sanctified enthusiasm of camp-meetings,) reflected much during the day, taking counsel at times with his wife. The result of it all he expressed the same evening, when, Ned Quirk having returned and the children having been sent to bed, the two friends sat over their pipes, with Arthur between them.

“You see, young un,” began Mr. Rumball, “we don’t want for to turn you out o’ doors, ‘specially in winter time when the nights is cold; but you see we ain’t great nobs as ‘as got their ten thousand a year, so no more we can’t be expected to keep you in lux’ry, you see. An’ then I’m not by any means sewer as it ‘ud be a good thing for you if we could; I myself believe in workin’ for one’s livin’, it comes sweeter like. You remember the hymn:

How doth the little busy bee,

Improve each shinin’ hower?

“Well, that’s always been my motto, you see, young un; at least sin’ I left off certain practices, as Mrs. Rumball wouldn’t thank me for referrin’ tew. Then there’s that other passage, as no doubt you knows very well, about what I did when I was a child, and ‘ow I come to alter my ways when I grow’d to be a man; and as you’re growin’ to be a man, you see, it’s time you bore that passage in mind. Well, the long an’ short of it all is, that Ned Quirk and me, we thinks we see our way to put you into the line of a honest livin’; and as you seem to a’ been ‘itherto in rayther queerish ‘ands, maybe you won’t be sorry to hear it. Now, if we do this for you, I’ve one thing to ask. Will you hengage to give my missus there all you earn every night, or every Saturday night, as may be, an’ trust to us to find you bed an’ board? Is it a fair bargain?”

“Yes, sir, thank you,” replied Arthur, overjoyed in his heart to think he had found such good friends.

“Well, then, we won’t say any more about it — but shake hands. There, Ned Quirk, I hain’t made so long a speech not sin’ I called upon the Almighty in public prayer for two hours and a half, by Aldgate Pump, some two-an’-twenty years gone by.”

Ned nodded approval, and the counsel shortly broke up. Arthur went to the truckle bed he had occupied on the previous night with a lighter heart than he had perhaps ever known. But before he went to sleep his thoughts wandered, as was their wont, to that garret in Whitecross Street and the face he had seen there for the last time, still and cold, and he sobbed himself into forgetfulness.

On the morrow began the work-a-day New Year, and with it Arthur’s first real entrance upon the business of life. Two doors off Mike Rumball’s shop was a small greengrocer’s, where not only vegetables and coals were sold, but also cat’s meat, the sale of the latter generally constituting so important a business as alone to suffice for the energies of one tradesman. But the energies of Mrs. Hannah Clinkscales were not to be gauged by the ordinary standards.

She was a notable woman who had, like Dogberry, “had losses,” and to whom the sole result of three marriages remained in the shape of her little daughter, Lizzie; to this child her mother was devoted heart and soul. No toil was too severe to undertake, no pinching too much to suffer, no meanness too low to practise, inasmuch as the one end of them all, that which hallowed the means, was the future happiness of Lizzie.

Mrs. Clinkscales happened to be in want of a lad, to assist her in the shop. The daughter, Lizzie, though nearly eleven years old, was never allowed to do anything resembling menial work. She kept the books, and did it, too, in a very beautiful little hand which was her mother’s envy and delight, but below this she could not be allowed to descend. When Mike Rumball first offered Arthur’s services Mrs. Clinkscales was doubtful. The lad was incapable of carrying half a hundred of coals, that was clear, and he had no experience whatever in weighing out goods or cutting up cat’s-meat; but after a little persuasive conversation on Mike’s part, an arrangement was somehow come to and Arthur was to be engaged. His duties were numerous. In the morning he went round a large circle of customers carrying a cat’s-meat basket on his arm, and, that accomplished, he weighed out coals, occasionally made a sale, kept the shop clean, chopped up old wood to sell by the pound, and perpetually ran errands; so that the day was amply filled up, and his weekly remuneration was, to begin with, five shillings — payment which Mrs. Clinkscales always spoke of on Saturday night as “extravagant to a degree.”

In those days there were no school-boards, and impertinencies, such as the arts of reading and writing, the uselessness, nay, the deleteriousness, of which cannot but be patent to all admirers of the good old times, including all those individuals who — not without reason — dread the growth of democratic principles among the poor; these arts were far from interfering with Arthur’s honest diligence. He had not remained long enough under the tutorship of Mr. Orlando Whiffle to greatly benefit thereby, and, though he had at first made promising progress with his letters, the reading of words of one syllable and the designing of very questionable pot-hooks had been the most that it had been his privilege to attain. And now in a very short time the pressure of new occupations had driven even that little out of his head. But the few weeks of his abode at Bloomford Rectory had not been unimportant in the boy’s life. The recollection of those days long continued to linger in his memory, as a sweet scent will sometimes cling to a handkerchief which has grown old and been made to serve ignoble uses. So short had been the period, and so severe the sufferings which had suddenly succeeded upon it, that the memory was little more to him than that of a vision seen in sleep, but nevertheless, it was a delight. He had not enjoyed it at the time, for that he had been too distressed in mind; he had not felt at home among those novel scenes; but now, when they at times recurred to him, they brought with them a sense of beauty and peace, of the joys belonging to a higher existence, something which he could never have conceived of but for that experience, but which mingled a secret discontent, a half-felt longing, with the menial toil of his present every-day life. He thought of Mr. Norman and his kind grave tone, and felt an emotion of gratitude well in his heart; he thought of little Helen Norman, and wished he could again walk hand-inhand with her along the spacious lawn.