“And vot sort of a mansion did you hang out in ven you wos at home?” inquired a little lad, whose rosy cheeks and dancing eyes would have qualified him to sit as a model for the hero of some little tale of rustic life and simplicity, but who had graduated in the lowest lore of the streets so much before he was properly able to walk that he was bandy-legged in consequence. There must have been some blood in him that was domestic and not vagrant in its currents, for he was as a rule one of the steadiest and best-behaved boys in the establishment. Only from time to time he burst out into street slang of the strongest description, apparently as a relief to his feelings. Happily for the cause it had at heart, the Boys’ Home was guided by large-minded counsels, and if the eyes of the master were as the eyes of Argus, they could also wink on occasion. “Hout with it!” said the bow-legged boy, straddling before Jan. “If it wos Buckingham Palace as you resided in, make a clean breast of it, and hease your mind.”
“Thee knows more of palaces than the likes of me. Thee manners be so fine,” said Jan; and the repartee drew a roar of laughter, in which the bandy-legged boy joined. “But I’ve lived in a windmill,” Jan added, “and that be more than thee’ve done, I fancy.”
Some of the boys had seen windmills, and some had not; and there was a strong tendency among the boys who had to give exaggerated, not to say totally fictitious, descriptions of those buildings to the boys who had not. There was a quick, prevailing impression, however, that Jan’s word could be trusted, and he was appealed to. “Take it off in a picter,” said the bandy-legged boy. “We heered as you took off a _sweet of furnitur_ in the Master’s face. Take off the windmill, if you lived in it.”
There was a bit of chalk in Jan’s pocket, and the courtyard was paved. He knelt down, and the boys gathered round him. They were sharp enough to be sympathetic, and when he begged them to be quiet they kept a breathless silence, which was broken only by the distant roar of London outside, and by the Master’s voice speaking in an adjoining passage.
“I can hardly say, sir, that I _fear_, but I think you’ll find most of them look too hearty and comfortable for your purpose.”