Alone In London | Page 4

person about was a ragged boy, barefoot and bareheaded with no clothing but a torn pair of trousers, very jagged about the ankles, and a jacket through which his thin shoulders displayed themselves. He was lolling in the lowest window-sill of the house opposite, and watched Oliver and the little girl looking about them with sundry signs of interest and amusement.
"She ain't nowhere in sight," he called across to them after a while, "nor won't be, neither, I'll bet you. You're looking out for the little un's mother, ain't you, old master?"
"Yes," answered Oliver; "do you know anything about her, my boy?"
"Nothink," he said, with a laugh; "only she looked as if she were up to some move, and as I'd nothink particular on hand, I just followed her. She was somethink like my mother, as is dead, not fat or rosy, you know, with a bit of a bruise about her eye, as if somebody had been fighting with her. I thought there'd be a lark when she left the little 'un in your shop, so I just stopped to see. She bolted as if the bobbies were after her."
"How long ago?" asked Oliver, anxiously.
"The clocks had just gone eight," he answered; "I've been watching for you ever since."
"Why! that's a full hour ago," said the old man, looking wistfully down the alley; "it's time she was come back again for her little girl."
[Illustration: THE LITTLE STRANGER.]
But there was no symptom of anybody coming to claim the little girl, who stood very quietly at his side, one hand holding the dog fast by his ear, and the other still lying in Oliver's grasp. The boy hopped on one foot across the narrow alley, and looked up with bright, eager eyes into the old man's face.
"I say," he said, earnestly, "don't you go to give her up to the p'lice. They'd take her to the house, and that's worse than the jail. Bless yer! they'd never take up a little thing like that to jail for a wagrant. You just give her to me, and I'll take care of her. It 'ud be easy enough to find victuals for such a pretty little thing as her. You give her up to me, I say."
"What's your name?" asked Oliver, clasping the little hand tighter, "and where do you come from?"
"From nowhere particular," answered the boy; "and my name's Antony; Tony, for short. I used to have another name; mother told it me afore she died, but it's gone clean out o' my head. Tony I am, anyhow, and you can call me by it, if you choose."
"How old are you, Tony?" inquired Oliver, still lingering on the threshold, and looking up and down with his dim eyes.
"Bless yer! I don't know," replied Tony; "I weren't much bigger nor her when mother died, and I've found myself ever since. I never had any father."
"Found yourself!" repeated the old man, absently.
"Ah, it's not bad in the summer," said Tony, more earnestly than before: "and I could find for the little 'un easy enough. I sleep anywhere, in Covent Garden sometimes, and the parks--anywhere as the p'lice 'ill let me alone. You won't go to give her up to them p'lice, will you now, and she so pretty?"
He spoke in a beseeching tone, and old Oliver looked down upon him through his spectacles, with a closer survey than he had given to him before. The boy's face was pale and meagre, with an unboyish sharpness about it, though he did not seem more than nine or ten years old. His glittering eyes were filled with tears, and his colourless lips quivered. He wiped away the tears roughly upon the ragged sleeve of his jacket.
"I never were such a baby before," said Tony, "only she is such a nice little thing, and such a tiny little 'un. You'll keep her, master, won't you? or give her up to me?"
"Ay, ay! I'll take care of her," answered Oliver, "till her mother comes back for her. She'll come pretty soon, I know. But she wants her supper now, doesn't she?"
He stooped down to bring his face nearer to the child's, and she raised her hand to it, and stroked his cheek with her warm, soft fingers.
"Beppo wants his supper, too," she said, in a clear, shrill, little voice, which penetrated easily through old Oliver's deafened hearing.
"And Beppo shall have some supper as well as the little woman," he answered. "I'll put the shutters up now, and leave the door ajar, and the gas lit for mother to see when she comes back; and if mother shouldn't come back to night, the little woman will sleep in my bed, won't she?"
"Dolly's to be a good girl till mammy comes back," said the child, plaintively, and holding harder by