"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 Shovel¹ 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 gal² learned me that; she's deep," Shovel said, wiping the words off his mouth with his sleeve.
 
"But you got no kids at 'ome!" remonstrated³ 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 irresistible⁴ 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?" entreated⁵ humble⁶ 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 growled⁷ sulkily:
 
"Well, I bit him in the leg."
 
"Not you," said selfish Tommy. "You forgets about repenting¹⁰, and if I let yer bite him, you would brag¹¹ 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 whined¹².
 
"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 cove¹³ I knows," to which Tommy replied, also in an awe¹⁴-struck voice:
 
"I'm so queer, Shovel, that when I thinks 'bout⁸ myself I'm—I'm sometimes near feared."
 
"What makes your face for to shine like that? Is it thinking about the blow-out?"
 
No, it was hardly that, but Tommy could not tell what it was. He and the saying about art for art's sake were in the streets that night, looking for each other.
 
The splendor¹⁵ of the brightly lighted hall, which was situated¹⁶ in one of the meanest streets of perhaps the most densely¹⁷ populated quarter in London, broke upon the two boys suddenly and hit each in his vital part, tapping an invitation on Tommy's brain-pan and taking Shovel coquettishly in the stomach. Now was the moment when Shovel meant to strip Tommy of the ticket, but the spectacle in front dazed him, and he stopped to tell a vegetable barrow how he loved his dear father and his dear mother, and all the dear kids at home. Then Tommy darted¹⁸ forward and was immediately lost in the crowd surging round the steps of the hall.
 
Several gentlemen in evening dress stood framed in the lighted doorway¹⁹, shouting: "Have your tickets in your hands and give them up as you pass in." They were fine fellows, helping²⁰ in a splendid work, and their society did much good, though it was not so well organized as others that have followed in its steps; but Shovel, you may believe, was in no mood to attend to them. He had but one thought: that the traitor²¹ Tommy was doubtless at that moment boring his way toward them, underground, as it were, and "holding his ticket in his hand." Shovel dived into the rabble²² and was flung back upside down. Falling with his arms round a full-grown man, he immediately ran up him as if he had been a lamp-post, and was aloft just sufficiently²³ long to see Tommy give up the ticket and saunter into the hall.
 
The crowd tried at intervals²⁴ to rush the door. It was mainly composed of ragged²⁵ boys, but here and there were men, women, and girls, who came into view for a moment under the lights as the mob heaved and went round and round like a boiling potful. Two policemen joined the ticket-collectors, and though it was a good-humored gathering²⁶, the air was thick with such cries as these:
 
"I lorst my ticket, ain't I telling yer? Gar on, guv'nor, lemme in!"
 
"Oh, crumpets, look at Jimmy! Jimmy never done nothink, your honor; he's a himposter"'
 
"I'm the boy what kicked the peeler. Hie, you toff with the choker, ain't I to step up?"
 
"Tell yer, I'm a genooine criminal, I am. If yer don't lemme in I'll have the lawr on you."
 
"Let a poor cove in as his father drownded hisself for his country."
 
"What air yer torking about? Warn't I in larst year, and the cuss as runs the show, he says to me, 'Allers welcome,' he says. None on your sarse, Bobby. I demands to see the cuss what runs—"
 
"Jest keeping on me out 'cos I ain't done nothin'. Ho, this is a encouragement to honesty, I don't think."
 
Mighty²⁷ in tongue and knee and elbow was an unknown knight²⁸, ever conspicuous²⁹; it might be but by a leg waving for one brief moment in the air. He did not want to go in, would not go in though they went on their blooming knees to him; he was after a viper³⁰ of the name of Tommy. Half an hour had not tired him, and he was leading another assault, when a magnificent lady, such as you see in wax-works, appeared in the vestibule and made some remark to a policeman, who then shouted:
 
"If so there be hany lad here called Shovel, he can step forrard."
 
A dozen lads stepped forward at once, but a flail³¹ drove them right and left, and the unknown knight had mounted the parapet amid a shower of execrations. "If you are the real Shovel," the lady said to him, "you can tell me how this proceeds, 'I love my dear father and my dear mother—' Go on."
 
Shovel obeyed, tremblingly. "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."
 
"Charming!" chirped³² the lady, and down pleasant-smelling aisles³⁴ she led him, pausing to drop an observation about Tommy to a clergyman: "So glad I came; I have discovered the most delightful³⁵ little monster called Tommy." The clergyman looked after her half in sadness, half sarcastically³⁶; he was thinking that he had discovered a monster also.
 
At present the body of the hall was empty, but its sides were lively with gorging³⁷ boys, among whom ladies moved, carrying platefuls of good things. Most of them were sweet women, fighting bravely for these boys, and not at all like Shovel's patroness, who had come for a sensation. Tommy falling into her hands, she got it.
 
Tommy, who had a corner to himself, was lolling in it like a little king, and he not only ordered roast-beef for the awe-struck Shovel, but sent the lady back for salt. Then he whispered, exultantly³⁸: "Quick, Shovel, feel my pocket" (it bulged³⁹ with two oranges), "now the inside pocket" (plum-duff), "now my waistcoat pocket" (threepence); "look in my mouth" (chocolates).
 
When Shovel found speech he began excitedly: "I love my dear father and my dear—"
 
"Gach!" said Tommy, interrupting him contemptuously. "Repenting ain't no go, Shovel. Look at them other coves⁴⁰; none of them has got no money, nor full pockets, and I tell you, it's 'cos they has repented⁴¹."
 
"Gar on!"
 
"It's true, I tells you. That lady as is my one, she's called her ladyship, and she don't care a cuss for boys as has repented," which of course was a libel, her ladyship being celebrated⁴² wherever paragraphs penetrate⁴⁵ for having knitted a pair of stockings for the deserving poor.
 
"When I saw that," Tommy continued, brazenly⁴⁶, "I bragged⁴⁸ 'stead of repenting, and the wuss I says I am, she jest says, 'You little monster,' and gives me another orange."
 
"Then I'm done for," Shovel moaned, "for I rolled off that 'bout loving my dear father and my dear mother, blast 'em, soon as I seen her."
 
He need not let that depress him. Tommy had told her he would say it, but that it was all flam.
 
Shovel thought the ideal arrangement would be for him to eat and leave the torking to Tommy. Tommy nodded. "I'm full, at any rate," he said, struggling with his waistcoat. "Oh, Shovel, I am full!"
 
Her ladyship returned, and the boys held by their contract, but of the dark character Tommy seems to have been, let not these pages bear the record. Do you wonder that her ladyship believed him? On this point we must fight for our Tommy. You would have believed him. Even Shovel, who knew, between the bites, that it was all whoppers, listened as to his father reading aloud. This was because another boy present half believed it for the moment also. When he described the eerie⁴⁹ darkness of the butler's pantry, he shivered involuntarily, and he shut his eyes once—ugh!—that was because he saw the blood spouting⁵⁰ out of the butler. He was turning up his trousers to show the mark of the butler's boot on his leg when the lady was called away, and then Shovel shook him, saying: "Darn yer, doesn't yer know as it's all your eye?" which brought Tommy to his senses with a jerk.
 
"Sure's death, Shovel," he............