“All right, daddy; sing us another song, and we’ll be mum as hysters,” called some one from the cart.
“Well, well, what shall I sing you?”
“Jolly Nose,” “Hot Codlings,” “Tippity Witchit.”
Hot codlings, however, were in a majority; and in his high, cracked, shaky voice the old man began the song, at the same time making the most of the truce time to finish his cobbling. When he had got through the first verse, and began the “Right tol tiddy-iddy” chorus, the boys joined in it, and just when the old man least expected it, a dab of mud was thrown, completely plastering over the solitary spectacle glass, and then another, extinguishing the candle against the wall with a hiss, and bringing it to the ground, while the mirth in the cart grew more uproarious than before.
“Come on,” exclaimed Mouldy; “it’s no use stopping here any longer; our wan’s up at the furder end.”
Catching tight hold on the tails of Mouldy’s coat, I followed in his footsteps in the direction indicated.
Evidently he as well as his friend Ripston was used to the place; for while they stepped along without hesitation, I could scarcely put one foot before the other without slipping along the oozy floor, or running foul of cart-shafts and trace-chains, which the little light shed by the few candles failed to render distinguishable from the thick darkness. Besides, nobody’s candle but the one by which the old “miser” (he was a poor old used-up Punch-and-Judy man, as I afterwards ascertained) was mending his boots, had a chance of showing much light about the place, each one being surrounded by a mob of boys and young men, squatting, some on the wet ground, and some on wisps of straw, playing cards or gambling with halfpence. As could be seen, some of the players had a bottle amongst them, and all were smoking short pipes, and swearing and laughing at a fine rate.
Presently we came to a standstill.
“Hold hard, Smiffield; this is our wan,” said Mouldy; and the next instant I could hear him, although I could not see him, climbing the sprites of the waggon-wheel.
“How is it?” asked Ripston.
“All right,” replied Mouldy, from the van.
“Up you goes, then,” observed Ripston to me. “Here, put your foot on the spokes, and I’ll give you a bunch up.”
He did so. He “bunched” me so hard, that I was bundled hands and knees on to the floor of the vehicle.
As Ripston was climbing in, he was heard to sniff loudly. “I thought as how you said it was all right?” said he, addressing Mouldy, in a disappointed voice. “You hain’t got no straw in there, I’ll lay a farden.”
“Not a mite,” replied Mouldy.
“I know’d it,” returned Ripston. “I know’d it as soon as my nose came acrost the wheel.
‘Hallo!’ thinks I, ‘it’s been coals to-day.’ Jigger coals, I say;” and the young fellow floundered sulkily into the van.
“I should give warnin’, if I was you Rip,” observed Mouldy, playfully. “I should write to the cove as the wan belongs to, and tell him that if he can’t keep off coals, and do nothink else ’cept move goods, so that there may alwis be a good whack of straw left in the wan, you cert’ny must change your lodgin’s.”
“It ain’t on’y there bein’ no straw,” replied Ripston, savagely, “it’s the jolly coal dust that gets up your nose when the wind blows underneath and up the cracks. What do you say, Smiffield?”
“Is this where we are goin’ to sleep?”
“This is the crib, and you are welcome to a share on it,” replied Mouldy, hospitably.
“But whereabouts is the bed?” I asked.
“The what?” asked Mouldy.
“The bed. There is a bed, isn’t there?”
“Oh, yes; a stunner; all stuffed choke full of goose’s feathers, and a lot of pillars and blankets, and that. They’re about here somewheres!” And Mouldy went round the van scraping with his foot “Where is that bed, Rip?” continued he; “jiggered if I can find it.”
Ripston, whose appreciation of his friend’s fun was of the keenest, only laughed, without answering.
“Oh! ah! I recollect now, Smiffield!” said Mouldy, seriously; “it was seized with the rest of our furniture when we had the brokers in the other day. Get out with you! comin’ and cockin’ it over us with your talk about beds. Hark here! this is our bed”—and he rapped with his boot-heel on the boards—“if it ain’t soft enough for you, get underneath; which it’s mud up to your ankles.”
“Don’t you mind him,” observed the softer-hearted Ripston, when he had had his laugh out; “it ain’t so comfor’ble as in general, Smiffield, ’cos of the want of straw. Why, sometimes we finds as much straw in this wan as would fill—well, a sack I was goin’ to say, but werry nigh. That’s fine, don’t you know! Just you fancy comin’ in on a cold night, thinkin’ what a precious miserable cove you are, and how you are a-goin’ to get them aches agin in all the knobby parts of your bones wot presses agin the planks! You think this, and reg’ler in the blues you climbs up into your wan, and there you finds a whole lot of straw—dry straw mind you—and you’ve only got to rake it together, and bury your head and shoulders in it! Oh!”
And the bare recollection of the luxury made Ripston draw in his breath, with a noise as though he was sipping hot and delicious soup.
“But isn’t it cold when you undress yourself?” I asked.
“Dunno,” replied Ripston, shortly; “never tried it.”
“Never tried undressing yourself to go to bed?”
“The last time I was undressed,—altogether, don’t you know,” said Ripston, “was—ah, last August, if I recollects right. It was when the plums was ripe, anyhow. You recollects the time, Mouldy; the werry last time we went into the Serpentine. Lor’ bless your silly young eyes, Smiffield; if we was to go undressin’ and coddlin’ of ourselves up, what time do you think we should get up in the mornin’? We’ve got our livin’ to get, don’t you know?”
“We sha’n’t be up very early to-morrow mornin’ if we don’t mind,” yawned Mouldy; “it must be close upon twelve now. Come on; let’s turn in if we’re a-goin to.”
“I’m ready,” replied Ripston. “Stop a bit, though—who’s a-goin’ to be piller?”
I didn’t know in the least what Ripston meant, so I took no notice of his question.
“There’s alwis a shyness about bein’ pillar when there ain’t no straw,” laughed Ripston.
“Will you be piller, Smiffield?” asked Mouldy.
I felt so perfectly wretched that I didn’t care what I was; I told them so.
“Well, we don’t want to be hard on you,” observed Mouldy; “but now that there’s three on us, we may as well enjoy ourselves. You haven’t no call to be piller without you like, you know.”
“It’s all accordin’ to what sort of a taste you’ve got,” said Ripston; “some fellows don’t care how cold they lay, so long as they lay soft. Other fellows are all t’other way, and ’ud sooner sleep in a brick-kil than anywheres. How do you like it, Smiffield?”
“I like to sleep warm, and soft as well,” was my tearful answer.
“What! and both at once, I s’pose,” sneered Mouldy. “I wish you might get it. If you’re goin’ to be piller, down with you; if you ain’t, say so, and let somebody else. We don’t want no snivellin’ in our wan neither, so I can tell yer, jolly young watery head! I’m sorry as we was fools enough to take up with yer!”
I hastened as well as I was able to explain to Mouldy that I was crying because I couldn’t help it, and not to give him offence. I assured him that I was quite willing to do anything to make things comfortable; and that if he would show me how to be pillow, I would go at it at once.