Noughts and Crosses | Page 2

pushed between our knees to his seat, and tried to look
brave as a lion.
The passengers turned an incurious, half-resentful stare upon him, and
then repented. I think that more than one of us wanted to speak, but
dared not.
It was not so much the little chap's look. But to the knot of his sea-kit
there was tied a bunch of cottage-flowers--sweet williams, boy's love,
love-lies-bleeding, a few common striped carnations, and a rose or
two--and the sight and smell of them in that frowsy 'bus were like tears
on thirsty eyelids. We had ceased to pity what we were, but the heart is
far withered that cannot pity what it has been; and it made us shudder
to look on the young face set towards the road along which we had
travelled so far. Only the minor actress dropped a tear; but she was
used to expressing emotion, and half-way down the Strand the 'bus
stopped and she left us.
The woman with an incurable complaint touched me on the knee.
"Speak to him," she whispered.
But the whisper did not reach, for I was two hundred miles away, and
occupied in starting off to school for the first time. I had two shillings
in my pocket; and at the first town where the coach baited I was to
exchange these for a coco-nut and a clasp-knife. Also, I was to break
the knife in opening the nut, and the nut, when opened, would be sour.

A sense of coming evil, therefore, possessed me.
"Why don't you speak to him?"
The boy glanced up, not catching her words, but suspicious: then
frowned and looked defiant.
"Ah," she went on in the same whisper, "it's only the young that I pity.
Sometimes, sir--for my illness keeps me much awake--I lie at night in
my lodgings and listen, and the whole of London seems filled with the
sound of children's feet running. Even by day I can hear them, at the
back of the uproar--"
The matrimonial agent grunted and rose, as we halted at the top of
Essex Street. I saw him slip a couple of half-crowns into the
conductor's hand: and he whispered something, jerking his head back
towards the interior of the 'bus. The boy was brushing his eyes, under
pretence of putting his cap forward; and by the time he stole a look
around to see if anyone had observed, we had started again. I pretended
to stare out of the window, but marked the wet smear on his hand as he
laid it on his lap.
In less than a minute it was my turn to alight. Unlike the matrimonial
agent, I had not two half-crowns to spare; but, catching the sick
woman's eye, forced up courage to nod and say--
"Good luck, my boy."
"Good day, sir."
A moment after I was in the hot crowd, whose roar rolled east and west
for miles. And at the back of it, as the woman had said, in street and
side-lane and blind-alley, I heard the footfall of a multitude more
terrible than an army with banners, the ceaseless pelting feet of
children--of Whittingtons turning and turning again.

FORTUNIO.

At Tregarrick Fair they cook a goose in twenty-two different ways; and
as no one who comes to the fair would dream of eating any other food,
you may fancy what a reek of cooking fills the narrow grey street soon
after mid-day.
As a boy, I was always given a holiday to go to the goose-fair; and it
was on my way thither across the moors, that I first made Fortunio's
acquaintance. I wore a new pair of corduroys, that smelt
outrageously--and squeaked, too, as I trotted briskly along the bleak
high road; for I had a bright shilling to spend, and it burnt a hole in my
pocket. I was planning my purchases, when I noticed, on a windy
eminence of the road ahead, a man's figure sharply defined against the
sky.
He was driving a flock of geese, so slowly that I soon caught him up;
and such a man or such geese I had never seen. To begin with, his rags
were worse than a scarecrow's. In one hand he carried a long staff; the
other held a small book close under his nose, and his lean shoulders
bent over as he read in it. It was clear, from the man's undecided gait,
that all his eyes were for this book. Only he would look up when one of
his birds strayed too far on the turf that lined the highway, and would
guide it back to the stones again with his staff. As for the geese, they
were utterly draggle-tailed and stained with travel, and waddled, every
one, with so woe-begone a