Chapter XIV. In which I enter into partnership with Messrs. Ripston and Mouldy, and agree to do as they do.
I was still sound asleep when the “pillow” wriggled himself away, and let my heavy head fall, with a tremendous bump, against the waggon floor.
Rubbing my eyes open, I perceived that Mouldy had already risen. In the semi-darkness, I could dimly make him out, sitting on the top ledge of the waggon side, yawning, and stirring his great crop of red hair with his fingers in a savage sort of way. For a few moments I felt altogether bewildered. It seemed to me but five minutes ago when the policeman had flashed his lantern light amongst us. Besides, I felt stiff and tired, and as though, as yet, I had had no sleep at all. Without considering the matter further, I curled up into the corner again, with my folded arms for a pillow.
“Now, Smiffield!” exclaimed Ripston, who was no doubt cramped, and excusably cross; “pull yourself together, without you means to stay here all day.”
“But it isn’t day yet,” I grumbled. “How can it be day, when it’s quite dark?”
“Oh! don’t get a-askin’ me none of your riddles. Get up and see if it isn’t daylight. Why, it’s sunshine. Get up here and have a look.”
As he was speaking, Ripston had climbed up to where Mouldy was perched, and, with a little trouble, I, too, climbed up.
“Now, where’s the sunshine?”
“Where? Why, on the river down there; see.” All round about us was dark and dismal indeed; but looking in the direction in which Ripston was pointing, there could be made out what at first seemed like a ball of bright silver. As you looked, however, you found that it was nothing but a round hole, in at which the sun was pouring. It was a wonderful sight—better than any peep-show it had been my lot to see. Looking out at the bright hole, you could see the water of the river all trembling, and, as it were, a-light, and a little bit of blue sky, and a barge laden with hay leisurely floating by.
“Come on,”, said I, putting a leg over the side of the van.
“Come on where?” asked Mouldy.
“Down there where the sun is; it is better than stopping here in the dark.”
“It is all werry well for them as likes it,” replied Mouldy, in a surly tone. “If you likes it, you had better go to it.”
“But ain’t you goin’ too—you and Ripston?”
“We are a-goin’ to where we always goes,” observed Ripston.
“Where’s that?”
“Why, to Common Garden, to be sure. Where’s the use of going down to the river?”
“Unless you’ve got a callin’ that way, which p’r’aps you have,” put in Mouldy.
“P’r’aps he’s goin’ a-tottin’,” (picking up bones,) said Ripston.
“Much good might it do him!—a farden a pound when he gets ’em, and pelted by the barge coves, who puts it down that everybody as goes for a walk on the shore is arter priggin’ coals. Are you goin’ a-tottin’, Smiffield?”
“No,” I replied; “I don’t know how.”
“Then what caper are you up to?”
“Well, I ain’t pertickler. All I want is, something to do to get me a livin’. Barkin’ was what I was thinking of. It ain’t such a bad way of gettin’ a livin’, is it?”
Mouldy looked at Ripston, and both boys laughed.
“You was thinkin’of barkin’, oh!” said Mouldy. “What put barkin’ into your head, Smiffield?”
“My father.”
“Father a coster, then?”
“No; my father is a—isn’t a coster.”
“Did you ever bark for anybody?”
“Oh, no! Father’s pal put me up to it. Never barked for anybody yet. I want to.”
“How do you know you can bark?” asked Ripston.
“Because I’ve tried it.”
“Well, cert’ny, you are a jolly liar! Why, you just said that you never had barked for nobody.”
“More I haven’t. I’ve tried it, though. I was trying it last night, in the market, when you come behind me.”
“’Course he was,” observed Mouldy. “Don’t you ’member, Rip? Oh, yes! you’ve got a werry tidy voice for barkin’, Smiffield: no mistake about that.”
I was very glad to hear him say this.
“You think, then, that I should do at it, Mouldy?”
“How do yer mean—‘do at it’?”
“Please the man what I worked for—earn my livin’.”
“Well, you might please the man what you worked for, but as for earning your livin’”—and Mouldy finished his remark by jerking his thumb over his shoulder with a manner that was not to be misunderstood.
“It might suit some coves, don’t yer know,” he continued; “but it didn’t suit me. Likewise it didn’t suit Ripston.”
“Then you’ve tried,it?” I asked, with sinking spirits.
“’Course we have. There’s very little we hain’t tried—eh, Ripston? Yes, we’ve tried it, and so has a whole lot of chaps we knows; and what they say is just what we say, and that is, that you won’t ketch ’em at it again. There! I’d sooner be a doctor’s cove, and go about in a Skillington suit with roly buttons. Wouldn’t you, Rip?”
“A’most,” replied Ripston. “It is a life! You’re up in the mornin’ afore you can see, and fust thing it’s drivin’ the barrow to market while the man what you works for walks on the path; then it’s mindin’ the barrow while he goes and buys and loads up; then it’s home agin with it, find, if it’s wegetables, washin’ it and settin’ of it out; then it’s paddlin’ about all day long a-hollerin’ of it out.”
“And that hain’t all,” said Mouldy. “S’pose it has been a bad day, and the stock’s of a handy sort, what’ll go in a basket—such as inguns for picklin’, or turmut reddishes—out you go agin by yourself in the evenin’, a-hawkin’ and a-hollerin’ of it, till there ain’t no lights in the houses ’cept in the top winders, and it’s too late to try any longer. And arter all, what’ll you get? Why, your wittles. That’s right—ain’t it, Ripston?”
“’Cept about the wittles; them you don’t always get.”
This was not a little alarming. From the very first I had made up mind to become a barker; it was that resolution, indeed, and the fancy that it could be brought about so easily—provided I had any music in my voice—which had all along backed up my yearning to leave home. It was the conviction that I had got a musical voice, as was proved by my trials of it in the pig market at Smithfield, which had induced me to go along with Mouldy and the other boy as soon as I was given to understand that they were going near to Covent Garden. Nobody, however, had told me that a barker’s life was a jolly one. The young man who had assisted at my father’s marriage with Mrs. Burke had merely mentioned that he had taken to barking to escape from a job which.
to his mind, was worse than shoring oysters; and Mrs. Winkship had, after all, said very little in its praise. True, she had drawn a very nice picture of herself, with her silk handkerchief over her shoulders, and without a bonnet, and with half a sieve of ripe greengages under her arm, and making a pretty pocket by strolling round the squares with them on a summer’s afternoon, and she had related the little incident to me while describing the particulars of the barking business; but really it had no more to do with barking than with bricklaying. Now here were two boys who had tried the trade of barking, and both of them had abandoned it in disgust. They had found something better to do. What was it?
“What do you chaps do for a livin’?” I asked.
“What do we do? Oh, anythink!” replied Mouldy, vaguely.