I don’t pretend that I was a particularly sensitive or squeamish sort of boy, even at that time; but really there was something about Mouldy’s blunt and brutal assertion that he was a thief that shocked me very much.
“Good Lor’! what a lot to snivel about!” exclaimed Mouldy, mockingly. “You didn’t take us for Sunday-school kids, wot minds wot their katekisims and their colicks tells’m? You was werry much mistaken if you did.”
“P’r’aps you, wot’s got a home,” put in Ripston, with polite sarcasm—”p’r’aps you, wot’s got a home as you ran away from, and can run back to when you finds it conwenient, can afford to be a little more pertickler. There’s one good thing for yer to think on, Smiffield—you ain’t in the least ’biiged to have any of the puddin’ what we’re a-goin’ to buy presently. You are a werry good little boy, and are free to hook it as soon as ever you like.”
“Which the sooner it is, the better, p’r’aps,” observed Mouldy, with an ugly scowl.
And disdaining further conversation with me, they turned about and went up the alley, leaving me standing in the road.
And, indeed, there I was, as Ripston had vulgarly but forcibly expressed it, “free to hook it” If my object was simply to amuse the reader, I should perhaps have refrained from making mention of this important circumstance; but as it is my true history, I have no choice but to relate it. There I was, free to run away. I had tasted a vagabond life; I had unwittingly fallen in with thieves; had eaten, and drank, and slept with them; but, my lucky star prevailing, I had found them out in time, and while I was still an honest boy. It was my chance. I am fully aware of it; and if any one is disposed to accuse me of walking into sin with my eyes open, I have nothing to say in my defence. I humbly confess that my proper course would have been to have screwed up courage and run home. I didn’t know the way, it is true; but I could easily have inquired, braving everything. But, ladies and gentlemen, pray bear in mind the peculiarity of my position, and let it weigh with you in your judgment. I was as miserable as the most severe amongst you could have desired, I do assure you. When I thought on how I had met Mouldy and Ripston; how they had invited me home to share their van; how I had slept with them, and talked with them, and shared their coffee,—when I reviewed these hard facts, and, setting them on one side, faced them with the horrid confession the boys had just made to me, the result was that my very ears tingled with shame. I had at least the consolation of knowing that when I took their ha’p’orth of coffee I thought them honest lads, and, further, of being in a position to prove, if necessary, that the money with which it was bought had been honestly earned of the lettuce dealer.
Did I run? I did not. Neither did I, having weighed the facts of the case deliberately, resolve to wait until Mouldy and Ripston re-appeared, and then make up to them again. It would be more correct to say that the balance of my mind was brought to a dead level, and I was inclined neither one way nor the other; and so I stood still. It was terrible to think that the two boys were thieves—indeed, that was the great weight in the scale of good resolution; but, alas! there was another great weight that at least counterbalanced it—my hunger. I was shivering and empty, and Ripston had distinctly said that he was presently going to buy some pudding, a share of which I was not obliged to take unless I liked, clearly enough implying that if I did like I might take it. Like a share of pudding! Once more, ladies and gentlemen, I venture to bespeak your merciful consideration to this part of my great temptation. In your ignorance of ragamuffinish ways, you probably underrate the inducement to my stopping. You, of course, know much more about pudding than I did—then at least; you, probably, are aware of twenty sorts or more, some so delicious and of such expensive make that every mouthful costs a shilling; but amongst them all you don’t know of one a single serving of which would be worth a moment’s thought under the circumstances. In answer to this, I make bold to say, that in the first place, you are incapable of understanding the said “circumstances” even. You may have felt shivery, and, perhaps, hungry; but as regards shivering, there is a certain sensation common amongst supperless, out-of-door, sleepers, who go breakfastless, and see no prospect of dinner—a peculiar and indescribable numbness of the extremities, and a perpetual ague within, compared with which your shivering is as nothing at all. Then as to the pudding, you may know of fifty sorts, and yet not of that one which I knew Ripston alluded to; indeed, he could have meant no other, as this one sort is all that is known at the pudding shops of ragamuffin districts. The nearest approach to it within your knowledge is plain suet pudding, inasmuch as it quite plain, and there is suet in it. What else beside suet—and flour—I am not in a position to state; but it is something mysteriously filling; something that holds the heat in such a wonderful way, that the lump you buy continues to warm your hands as you walk along in the cold, until you put the very last piece in your mouth; something that swells a pudding out, so that the piece you get for a penny is as big as any four ordinary dinner-table “servings” of a same-named article—a lump as big as the fourth part of a brick. Just imagine it! Just imagine the picture of a lump of pudding as big as the fourth part of a brick—hot, bear in mind, and of a flavour and quality well known and appreciated—floating before the mind’s eye of a weak-minded little hungry vagabond such as I was! Presently I spied Ripston and Mouldy coming back up the court.
There was a great flour-waggon standing at a baker’s door close at hand, and behind this I dodged without being seen by them. They seemed very jolly. Ripston had his hands plunged deep into the pockets that had lately held the nuts, and Mouldy was throwing up and catching four or five penny pieces. When they arrived at the top of the alley, they looked about from left to right, and Ripston gave a whistle. No doubt they were looking for me, and that the whistle was meant to attract my attention should I happen to be in the neighbourhood. I kept close behind the wheel, however, and they saw nothing of me, and went down the street laughing.
I crossed over the way, and watched them. They went along, talking and laughing, until they got nearly to Long Acre, where there was a pudding shop; and while Mouldy went in, Ripston stood outside looking through the window. Presently Mouldy came out with such a pile of pudding of the sort just described, smoking on a cabbage-leaf, as made me draw in my breath to see. It seemed a very cold breath that I drew, and it made me feel more shivery and empty than ever.
I made my way over to their side of the road, and walked a goodish way behind them; not so far, however, but that I could see Ripston take one of the big slices, and raising it to his mouth, bite out of it a bit—ah! ever so large. He kept on raising it and biting it; (you may judge from this, and considering what sort of bites they were, how large were the pen’orths), and I got closer to them. I was dreadfully hungry.
I at last got so close behind them, that I could actually hear them eating. I could hear Ripston drawing his breath to and fro to cool the mouthful, and as he now and then turned his head aside I could see the contentment in his eyes.
When they commenced, there were but five lumps on the cabbage-leaf, and they were each well advanced with their second lump. If I meant to speak, there was no time to lose.
“What I likes Blinkins’s puddin’ for is, ’cos of the whackin’ lot of suet wot’s in it,” observed Ripston.
“I b’lieve yer,” replied Mouldy, licking his lips; “it’s a’most like meat puddin’.”