Personal Reminiscences in Book Making, and Some Short Stories

“I say, you let me alone!” growled the companion, turning uneasily on his hard couch.

“I say, you get up,” answered Stumpy, giving the companion a pinch on the tender part of his arm. “Come, look alive, Howlet. I sees a railway porter and a bobby.”

Owlet, whose nose had suggested his name, had been regardless of the poke, the tug, and the pinch, but was alive to the hint. He at once came to the sitting posture on hearing the dreaded name of “bobby,” and rubbed his eyes. On seeing that there was neither policeman nor guard near, he uttered an uncomplimentary remark and was about to lie down again, but was arrested by the animated expression of his comrade’s face and the heaving of his shoulders.

“Why, what ever is the matter with you?” he demanded. “Are you goin’ to bust yourself wi’ larfin’, by way of gettin’ a happetite for the breakfast that you hain’t no prospect of?”

To this Stumpy replied by pulling from his trousers pocket four shining pennies, which he held out with an air of triumph.

“Oh!” exclaimed Owlet; and then being unable to find words sufficiently expressive, he rubbed the place where the front of his waistcoat would have been if he had possessed one.

“Yes,” said Stumpy, regarding the coppers with a pensive air, “I’ve slep’ with you all night in my ’and, an’ my ’and in my pocket, an’ my knees doubled up to my chin to make all snug, an’ now I’m going to have a tuck in—a blow out—a buster—a—”

He paused abruptly, and looking with a gleeful air at his companion, said—

“But that wasn’t what I was laughin’ at.”

“Well, I suppose it warn’t. What was it, then?”

The boy’s eyes sparkled again, and for some moments a half-suppressed chuckling prevented speech.

“It was a dream,” he said at last.

“A dream!” exclaimed Owlet contemptuously.

“I hate dreams. When I dreams ’em they’re always about bobbies and maginstrates, an’ wittles, an’ when other fellows tells about ’em they’re so long-winded an’ prosy. But I had a dream too. What was yours?”

“My dream was about a bobby,” returned his friend. “See, here it is, an’ I won’t be long-winded or prosy, Howlet, so don’t growl and spoil your happetite for that ’ere breakfast that’s a-comin’. I dreamed—let me see, was it in Piccadilly—no, it was Oxford Street, close by Regent Street, where all the swells go to promynade, you know. Well, I sees a bobby—of course I never can go the length my little toe without seein’ a bobby! but this bobby was a stunner. You never see’d sitch a feller. Not that he was big, or fierce, but he had a nose just two-foot-six long. I know for certain, for I’m a good judge o’ size, besides, I went straight up to him, as bold as brass, and axed him how long it was, an’ he told me without winkin’. The strange thing about it is that I wasn’t a bit surprised at his nose. Wery odd, ain’t it, eh, Howlet, that people never is surprised at anything they sees in dreams? I do b’lieve, now, if I was to see a man takin’ a walk of a’ arternoon with his head in his coat-tail pocket I’d take it quite as a matter of course.

“Well, w’en that bobby had told me his nose was two-foot-six inches long I feels a most unaccountable and astonishin’ gush of indignation come over me. What it was at I don’t know no more nor the man in the moon. P’r’aps it was the sudden thought of all the troubles that bobbies has brought on me from the day I was born till now. Anyhow, I was took awful bad. My buzzum felt fit to bust. I knowed that I must do somethin’ to him or die; so I seized that bobby by the nose, and hauled him flat down on his breast. He was so took with surprise that he never made any struggle, but gived vent to a most awful howl. My joy at havin’ so easily floored my natural enemy was such that I replied with a Cherokee yell. Then I gave his nose a pull up so strong that it well-nigh broke his neck an’ set him straight on his pins again! Oh! Howlet, you can’t think what a jolly dream it was. To do it all so easy, too!”

“Well, what happened arter that?” asked Owlet.

“Nothin’ happened after that,” returned Stumpy, with a somewhat sad expression on his usually gleeful visage. “It’s a wery strange thing, Howlet, that dreams inwariably wanishes away just at the most interestin’ p’int. Did you ever notice that?”

“Notice it! I should think I did. Why the dream that I had w’en I was layin’ alongside o’ you was o’ that sort exactly. It was all about wittles, too, an’ it’s made me that ’ungry I feels like a ravagin’ wolf.”

“Come along, then, Howlet, an’ you an’ me will ravage somethin’ wi’ them browns o’ mine. We’ll ’ave a good breakfast, though it should be our last, an’ I’ll stand treat.”

“You’re a trump, Stumpy; an’ I’ll tell you my dream as we goes along.”

“Hall right—but mind you don’t come prosy over me. I can’t stand it no more nor yourself.”

“You mind Dick Wilkin, don’t you?”

“What—the young man from the country as I’ve see’d standin’ at the dock gates day after day for weeks without getting took on?”

“That’s him,” continued Owlet, with a nod, as he shoved his hand into his trousers pockets. “He brought a wife and five kids from the country with him—thinkin’ to better hisself in London. Ha! a sweet little town for a cove as is ’ard up to better hisself in—ho yes, certingly!” remarked the precocious boy in a tone of profound sarcasm.

“Well,” he continued, “Dick Wilkin came to better hisself an’ he set about it by rentin’ a single room in Cherubs Court—a fine saloobrious spot, as you know, not far from the Tower. He ’ad a few bobs when he came, and bought a few sticks o’ furniture, but I don’t need for to tell you, Stumpy, that the most o’ that soon went up the spout, and the Wilkins was redooced to beggary—waried off an’ on with an odd job at the docks. It was when they first comed to town that I was down wi’ that fever, or ’flenzy, or somethink o’ that sort. The streets bein’ my usual ’abitation, I ’ad no place in partikler to go to, an’ by good luck, when I gave in, I lay down at the Wilkins’ door. O! but I was bad—that bad that it seemed as if I should be cleared out o’ my mortal carcase entirely—”

“Mulligrumps?” inquired his sympathetic friend.

“No, no. Nothin’ o’ that sort, but a kind of hot all-overishness, wi’ pains that—but you can’t understand it, Stumpy, if you’ve never ’ad it.”

“Then I don’t want to understand it. But what has all this to do wi’ your dream?”

“Everythink to do with it, ’cause it was about them I was dreamin’. As I was sayin’, I fell down at their door, an’ they took me in, and Mrs Wilkin nussed me for weeks till I got better. Oh, she’s a rare nuss is Mrs Wilkin. An’ when I began to get better the kids all took to me. I don’t know when I would have left them, but when times became bad, an’ Dick couldn’t git work, and Mrs Wilkin and the kids began to grow thin, I thought it was time for me to look out for myself, an’ not remain a burden on ’em no longer. I know’d they wouldn’t let me away without a rumpus, so I just gave ’em the slip, and that’s ’ow I came to be on the streets again, an’ fell in wi’ you, Stumpy.”

“’Ave you never seen ’em since?”

“Never.”

“You ungrateful wagibone!”

“What was the use o’ my goin’ to see ’em w’en I ’ad nothin’ to give ’em?” returned Owlet in an apologetic tone.

“You might ’ave given ’em the benefit of your adwice if you ’ad nothin’ else. But what did you dream about ’em?”

“I dreamt that they was all starvin’—which ain’t unlikely to be true—an’ I was so cut up about it, that I went straight off to a butcher’s shop and stole a lot o’ sasengers; then to a baker’s and stole a loaf the size of a wheel-barrer; then to a grocer’s and stole tea an’ sugar; an’ the strange thing was that neither the people o’ the shops nor the bobbies seemed to think I was stealin’! Another coorious thing was that I carried all the things in my pockets—stuffed ’em in quite easy, though there was ’arf a sack o’ coals among ’em!”

“Always the way in dreams,” remarked his friend philosophically.

“Yes—ain’t it jolly convenient?” continued the other. “Well, w’en I got to the ’ouse I set to work, made a rousin’ fire, put on the kettle, cooked the wittles as if I’d bin born and bred in a ’otel, and in less than five minutes ’ad a smokin’ dinner on the table, that would ’ave busted an alderman. In course the Wilkins axed no questions. Father, mother, five kids, and self all drew in our chairs, and sot down—”

“What fun!” exclaimed Stumpy.

“Ay, but you spoilt the fun, for it was just at that time you shoved your fist into my ribs, and woke me before one of us could get a bite o’ that grub into our mouths. If we’d even ’ad time to smell it, that would ’ave bin somethink to remember.”

“Howlet,” said the other impressively, “d’ye think the Wilkins is livin’ in the same place still?”

“As like as not.”

“Could you find it again?”

“Could I find Saint Paul’s, or the Moniment? I should think so!”

“Come along, then, and let’s pay ’em a wisit.”

They were not long in finding the place—a dirty court at the farther end of a dark passage.

Owlet led the way to the top of a rickety stair, and knocked at one of the doors which opened on the landing. No answer was returned, but after a second application of the knuckles, accompanied by a touch of the toe, a growling voice was heard, then a sound of some one getting violently out of bed, a heavy tread on the floor, and the door was flung open.

“What d’ee want?” demanded a fierce, half-drunken man.

“Please, sir, does the Wilkins stop here?”

“No, they don’t,” and the door was shut with a bang.