Unhappily there chanced to be a shaggy-haired dog waiting outside the gate whose taste for music had evidently not been cultivated. At the very first notes he raised his head with a long howl of disgust that spoilt the effect entirely. It _was_ trying, for Patch saw his prospects vanishing into thin air unless his rival could be promptly silenced; so slipping cautiously behind, he dealt the animal as vigorous a kick as the dilapidated state of his shoe would permit.
"Oh, thee should not have done that! the poor creature meant no harm," cried the lady reproachfully, hastening down the steps to console the sufferer; and Patch discovered, with confusion, that the dog belonged to her. Truly it had been an unfortunate day.
"He looked like a poor dog; I didn't know it was yours," he stammered out. "It's the first chance I've had to-day, and he was spoiling the music."
The old lady looked gravely down at his pinched face and ragged figure.
"It's enough to make a fellow ill--hungry like this all day long."
He looked as if he were speaking sorrowful truth. The old lady opened her bag--"There is sixpence for thee to get some food with," she said kindly, "and try and remember another time, friend, that if thee art poor thyself there is the greater reason why thee should'st feel for others who are poor likewise."
Patch looked from the coin to her face, almost too much astonished to be grateful. Donations to him usually consisted of pence or halfpence flung into the gutter, or carelessly dropped on the roadway. That a lady--and a very beautiful old lady she seemed to him, in spite of the old-fashioned dress and speech--should stand to talk to him in a civil, pleasant voice was something new indeed, especially after that unfortunate blunder about her dog.
"We are none of us so poor that we cannot help each other in some little way," she went on gently, perhaps mistaking the cause of his silence.
"There ain't anybody poorer than me," Patch answered; and his appearance certainly justified the statement. "Much I could help other folk!"
"Try and find out; it only needs a word sometimes. Good-night, friend, do not stay here longer than thee can help in thy wet clothes."
Patch received all the injunctions respectfully for the sake of the sixpence, and proceeded to carry out the first of them straightway. As quickly as his battered shoes would allow he was out of sight on his way to a certain well-known cook-shop. There, in all the assurance of conscious wealth, he planted his elbows on the window-ledge and critically surveyed the contents. Great joints of meat, slabs of suet pudding, dotted here and there with currants, one--but that was a very superior compound--with raisins, cakes and pies in abundance.