Little Slidder Resists Temptation Successfully, and I Become Enslaved.  
“Pompey,” said I, one afternoon, while reclining on the sofa in Dobson’s drawing-room, my leg being not yet sufficiently restored to admit of my going out— “Pompey, I’ve got news for you.”
 
To my surprise my doggie would not answer to that name at all when I used it, though he did so when it was used by Miss Blythe.
 
“Dumps!” I said, in a somewhat injured tone.
 
Ears and tail at once replied.
 
“Come now, Punch,” I said, rather sternly; “I’ll call you what I please—Punch, Dumps, or Pompey—because you are my dog still, at least as long as your mistress and I live under the same roof; so, sir, if you take the Dumps when I call you Pompey, I’ll punch your head for you.”
 
Evidently the dog thought this a very flat jest, for he paid no attention to it whatever.
 
“Now, Dumps, come here and let’s be friends. Who do you think is coming to stay with us—to stay altogether? You’ll never guess. Your old friend and first master, little Slidder, no less. Think of that!”
 
Dumps wagged his tail vigorously; whether at the news, or because of pleasure at my brushing the hair off his soft brown eyes, and looking into them, I cannot tell.
 
“Yes,” I continued, “it’s quite true. This fire will apparently be the making of little Slidder, as well as you and me, for we are all going to live and work together. Isn’t that nice? Evidently Dr McTougall is a trump, and so is his friend Dobson, who puts this fine mansion at his disposal until another home can be got ready for us.”
 
I was interrupted at this point by an uproarious burst of laughter from the doctor himself, who had entered by the open door unobserved by me. I joined in the laugh against myself, but blushed, nevertheless, for man does not like, as a rule, to be caught talking earnestly either to himself or to a dumb creature.
 
“Why, Mellon,” he said, sitting down beside me, and patting my dog, “I imagined from your tones, as I entered, that you were having some serious conversation with my wife.”
 
“No; Mrs McTougall has not yet returned from her drive. I was merely having a chat with Dumps. I had of late, in my lodgings, got into a way of thinking aloud, as it were, while talking to my dog. I suppose it was with an unconscious desire to break the silence of my room.”
 
“No doubt, no doubt,” replied the doctor, with a touch of sympathy in his tone. “You must have been rather lonely in that attic of yours. And yet do you know, I sometimes sigh for the quiet of such an attic! Perhaps when you’ve been some months under the same roof with these miniature thunderstorms, Jack, Harry, Job, Jenny, and Dolly, you’ll long to go back to the attic.”
 
A tremendous thump on the floor overhead, followed by a wild uproar, sent the doctor upstairs—three steps at a stride. I sat prudently still till he returned, which he did in a few minutes, laughing.
 
“What d’you think it was?” he cried, panting. “Only my Dolly tumbling off the chest of drawers. My babes have many pleasant little games. Among others, cutting off the heads of dreadful traitors is a great favourite. They roll up a sheet into a ball for the head. Then each of them is led in turn to the scaffold, which is the top of a chest of drawers. One holds the ball against the criminal’s shoulders, another cuts it off with a wooden knife, a basket receives it below, then one of them takes it out, and, holding it aloft shouts ‘Behold the head of a traitor!’ It seems that four criminals had been safely decapitated, and Dolly was being led to the fatal block, when she slipped her foot and fell to the ground, overturning Harry and a chair in her descent. That was all.”
 
“Not hurt, I hope?”
 
“Oh no! They never get hurt—seriously hurt, I mean. As to black-and-blue shins, scratches, cuts, and bumps, they may be said to exist in a perpetually maimed condition.”
 
“Strange!” said I musingly, “that they should like to play at such a disagreeable subject.”
 
“Disagreeable!” exclaimed my friend, “pooh! that’s nothing. You should see them playing at the horrors of the Inquisition. My poor wife sometimes shudders at the idea that we have been gifted with five monsters of cruelty, but any one can see with half an eye that it is a fine sense of the propriety of retributive justice that influences them.”
 
“Any one who chooses to go and look at the five innocent faces when they are asleep,” said I, laughing, “can see with a quarter of an eye that you and Mrs McTougall are to be congratulated on the nature of your little ones.”
 
“Of course we are, my dear fellow,” returned the doctor with enthusiasm. “But—to change the subject—has little Slidder been here to-day?”
 
“Not that I know of.”
 
“Ah! there he is” said the doctor, as, at that instant, the door-bell rang; “there is insolence in the very tone of his ring. He has pulled the visitor’s bell, too, and there goes the knocker! Of all the imps that walk, a London street-boy is—” The sentence was cut short by the opening of the door and the entrance of my little protégé. He had evidently got himself up for the occasion, for his shoeblack uniform had been well brushed, his hands and face severely washed, and his hair plastered well down with soap-and-water.
 
“Come in, Slidder—that’s your name, isn’t it?” said the doctor.
 
“It is, sir—Robin Slidder, at your sarvice,” replied the urchin, giving me a familiar nod. “’Ope your leg ain’t so cranky as it wos, sir. Gittin’ all square, eh?”
 
I repressed a smile with difficulty as I replied— “It is much better, thank you. Attend to what Dr McTougall has to say to you.”
 
“Hall serene,” he replied, looking with cool urbanity in the doctor’s face, “fire away!”
 
“You’re a shoeblack, I see,” said the doctor.
 
“That’s my purfession.”
 
“Do you like it?”
 
“Vell, w’en it’s dirty weather, with lots o’ mud, an’ coppers goin’, I does. W’en it’s all sunshine an’ starwation, I doesn’t.”
 
“My friend Mr Mellon tells me that you’re a very good boy.”
 
Little Slidder looked at me with a solemn, reproachful air.
 
“Oh! what a wopper!” he said.
 
We both laughed at this.
 
“Come, Slidder,” said I, “you must learn to treat us with more respect, else I shall have to change my opinion of you.”
 
“Wery good, sir, that’s your business, not mine. I wos inwited here, an’ here I am. Now, wot ’ave you got to say to me?—that’s the p’int.”
 
“Can you read and write?” resumed the doctor.
 
“Cern’ly not,” replied the boy, with the air of one who had been insulted; “wot d’you take me for? D’you think I’m a genius as can read an’ write without ’avin’ bin taught or d’you think I’m a monster as wos born readin’ an’ writin’? I’ve ’ad no school to go to nor nobody to putt me there.”
 
“I thought the School Board looked after such as you.”
 
“So they does, sir; but I’ve been too many for the school-boarders.”
 
“Then it’s your own fault that you’ve not been taught?” said the doctor, somewhat severely.
 
“Not at all,” returned the urchin, with quiet assurance. “It’s the dooty o’ the school-boarders to ketch me, an’ they can’t ketch me. That’s not my fault. It’s my superiority.”
 
My friend looked at the little creature before him with much surprise. After a few seconds’ contemplation and thought, he continued— “Well, Slidder, as my friend here says you are a good sort of boy, I am bound to believe him, though appearances are somewhat against you. Now, I am in want of a smart boy at present, ............