"I think you were worse than a flat to steal my money, and my friend's."
The boy looked perplexed. "Ga on!" said he.
"What's your name?" asked Jack, changing the subject.
"Ga on! What do you mean by `what'? Ain't Billy enough?"
"Live? where I can; that's where I live!"
"Then you don't live with your mother in that court any longer?"
"The old gal--she ain't no concern of yourn!" said the youth, firing up.
"I know that," said Jack, evidently at a loss, as I had been, how to pursue the conversation with this queer boy. "I say, Billy," he added, "where are you going to sleep to-night?"
"Ain't a-goin' to sleep nowheres!" was the prompt reply.
"Would you like to come and sleep with me?"
"'Tain't no concern o' yourn; so it ain't."
"Well, I expect I'll want my boots done again to-morrow evening. Here's a penny for this time."
The boy took the penny and held it in the palm of his hand.
"You're 'avin' a lark with me," said the boy. "This 'ere brown--"
"What's wrong? It's a good one, isn't it?"
"Oh, ain't you funny? I don't want yer brown!" and to my amazement he tossed the coin back.
Jack solemnly picked it up and put it back into his pocket. "Good- night, Billy," said he. "Mind you are here to-morrow."
"No fear!" said Billy, who was once more resuming his gymnastic exercises.
My friend Smith was certainly a queer fellow. He seemed more interested during the remainder of our walk with the little dishonest shoeblack we had just left than with my half-candid story of my life in London during his absence.
"Depend upon it, that's his way of making amends," said he; "there's some good in the young scamp after all."
"It's precious hard to discover," said I. "He appears to me to be a graceless young reprobate, who knows well enough that it's wicked to steal, and seems rather proud of it than otherwise. I say, Jack, I'd advise you not to have too much to do with him. He's done you harm enough as it is."
When we returned to Beadle Square we found our amiable fellow-lodgers evidently expecting our arrival. It was so long since I had taken supper at Mrs Nash's that I seemed quite as much a stranger as Jack.
"Here they come," said Horncastle, who always shone on occasions like this. "Here comes the two smallpoxes. Hold your noses, you fellows."