My Doggie and I. Robert Michael Ballantyne
as there was any occasion for—
“No; not quite forgotten us. I hear her coming now.”
“Ha! so she is. Now you shall have a feed.” Both ears elevated to the full extent obviously meant “Hurrah!” while a certain motion of his body appeared to imply that, in consequence of his sedentary position, he was vainly attempting to wag the sofa.
“If you please, sir,” said my landlady, laying the breakfast tray on the table, “there’s a shoe-black in the kitchen says he wants to see you.”
“Ah! young Slidder, I fancy. Well, send him up.”
“He says he’s ’ad his breakfast an’ will wait till you have done, sir.”
“Very considerate. Send him up nevertheless.”
In a few minutes my protégé stood before me, hat in hand, looking, in the trim costume of the brigade, quite a different being from the ragged creature I had met with in Whitechapel. Dumps instantly assaulted him with loving demonstrations.
“How spruce you look, my boy!”
“Thanks to you, sir,” replied Slidder, with a familiar nod; “they do say I’m lookin’ up.”
“I hope you like the work. Have you had breakfast? Would a roll do you any good?”
“Thankee, I’m primed for the day. I came over, sir, to say that granny seems to me to be out o’ sorts. Since I’ve been allowed to sleep on the rug inside her door, I’ve noticed that she ain’t so lively as she used to was. Shivers a deal w’en it ain’t cold, groans now an’ then, an whimpers a good deal. It strikes me, now—though I ain’t a reg’lar sawbones—that there’s suthin’ wrong with her in’ards.”
“I’ll finish breakfast quickly and go over with you to see her,” said I.
“Don’t need to ’urry, sir,” returned Slidder; “she ain’t wery bad—not much wuss than or’nary—on’y I’ve bin too anxious about her—poor old thing. I’ll vait below till you’re ready.—Come along, Punch, an’ jine yer old pal in the kitchen till the noo ’un’s ready.”
After breakfast we three hurried out and wended our way eastward. As the morning was unusually fine I diverged towards one of the more fashionable localities to deliver a note with which I had been charged. Young Slidder’s spirits were high, and for a considerable time he entertained me with a good deal of the East-end gossip. Among other things, he told me of the great work that was being done there by Dr Barnardo and others of similar spirit, in rescuing waifs like himself from their wretched condition.
“Though some on us don’t think it so wretched arter all,” he continued. “There’s the Slogger, now, he won’t go into the ’ome on no consideration; says he wouldn’t give a empty sugar-barrel for all the ’omes in London. But then the Slogger’s a lazy muff. He don’t want to work—that’s about it. He’d sooner starve than work. By consikence he steals, more or less, an finds a ’ome in the ‘stone jug’ pretty frequent. As to his taste for a sugar-barrel, I ain’t so sure that I don’t agree with ’im. It’s big, you know—plenty of room to move, w’ich it ain’t so with a flour-barrel. An’ then the smell! Oh! you’ve no notion! W’y, that’s wuth the price of a night’s lodgin’ itself, to say nothin’ o’ the chance of a knot-hole or a crack full o’ sugar, that the former tenants has failed to diskiver.”
While the waif was commenting thus enthusiastically on the bliss of lodging in a sugar-barrel, we were surprised to see Dumps, who chanced to be trotting on in front come to a sudden pause and gaze at a lady who was in the act of ringing the door-bell of an adjoining house.
The door was opened by a footman, and the lady was in the act of entering when Dumps gave vent to a series of sounds, made up of a whine, a bark, and a yelp. At the same moment his tail all but twirled him off his legs as he rushed wildly up the stairs and began to dance round the lady in mad excitement.
The lady backed against the door in alarm. The footman, anxious apparently about his calves, seized an umbrella and made a wild assault on the dog, and I was confusedly conscious of Slidder exclaiming, “Why, if that ain’t my young lady!” as I sprang up the steps to the rescue.
“Down, Dumps, you rascal; down!” I exclaimed, seizing him by the brass collar with which I had invested him.—“Pardon the rudeness of my dog, madam,” I said, looking up; “I never saw him act in this way before. It is quite unaccountable—”
“Not quite so unaccountable as you think,” interrupted Slidder, who stood looking calmly on, with his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face.—“It’s your own dog, miss.”
“What do you mean, boy?” said the lady, a gaze of surprise chasing away the look of alarm which had covered her pretty face.
“I mean ’xactly what I says, miss. The dog’s your own: I sold it to you long ago for five bob!”
The girl—for she was little more than sixteen—turned with a startled, doubting look to the dog.
“If you don’t b’lieve it, miss, look at the vite spot on the bridge of ’is nose,” said Slidder, with a self-satisfied nod to the lady and a supremely insolent wink to the footman.
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