My Friend Smith

It had never occurred to me before that I cost anything to keep, but the fact was slowly beginning to dawn on me, and the prospect of having shortly to support myself cast rather a damper over the pictures I had drawn to myself of my pleasant life in London.

"Good-bye," said my uncle. "Here is half-a-sovereign for you, which remember is on no account to be spent. Keep it by you, and don't part with it. Good-night."

And so my uncle and I parted.

It was with rather subdued feelings that next morning I set out betimes for the station, lugging my small trunk along with me. That trunk and the half-sovereign I was not to spend comprised, along with the money which was to pay my fare, and the clothes I wore, the sum of my worldly goods. The future lay all unknown before me. My work at Hawk Street, my residence at Mrs Nash's, my eight s.h.i.+llings a week, I had yet to find out what they all meant; at present all was blank--all, that is, except one spot, and that was the spot occupied by my friend Smith. I could reckon on him, I knew, whatever else failed me.

I caught my train without much difficulty, as I was at the station at least half an hour before it was due, and had a third-cla.s.s carriage to myself all the way to London. There were not many people travelling at that early hour, and when I reached the great metropolis at seven o'clock the station and streets looked almost as deserted as on the former occasion they had been crowded.

Mrs Nash's residence, so the card said, was in Beadle Square, wherever that might be. I was, however, spared the anxiety of hunting the place up, for my uncle had authorised me to spend a s.h.i.+lling in a cab for the occasion; and thus conveyed, after twistings and turnings which positively made my head ache, I arrived in state at my future lodging.

The "square" was, like many other City squares, a collection of tumbledown dingy houses built round an open s.p.a.ce which might once have contained nothing but green gra.s.s and trees, but was now utterly dest.i.tute of either. There was indeed an enclosure within rusty and broken iron palings, but it contained nothing but mud, a few old beer- cans, and a lot of waste-paper, and one dead cat and one or two half- starved living ones. A miserable look-out, truly, as I stood on Mrs Nash's doorstep with my trunk waiting to be let in.

A slatternly female, whom I supposed to be the servant, admitted me.

"Is Mrs Nash in?" said I.

"Yes,

She spoke gruffly and like a person who was not very fond of boys.

"Yes," said I.

"All right," said she; "come in and bring your trunk."

I obeyed. The place looked very dark and grimy, far worse than ever Stonebridge House had been. I followed her, struggling with my trunk, up the rickety staircase of a house which a hundred years ago might have been a stylish town residence, but which now was one of the forlornest ghosts of a house you ever saw.

I found myself at last in a big room containing several beds.

"Here's where you'll sleep," said the female.

"Are there other boys here, then?" I asked, who had expected a solitary lodging.

"Yes, lots of 'em; and a bad lot too."

"Are they Merrett, Barnacle, and Company's boys?" I inquired.

"Who?" inquired Mrs Nash, rather bewildered.

I saw my mistake in time. Of course this was a regular lodging-house for office-boys generally.

"Leave your box there," said Mrs Nash, "and come along."

Leading to the floor below the dormitory, I was shown a room with a long table down the middle, with a lot of dirty pictures stuck on the wall, and one or two dirty books piled up in the corner.

"This is the parlour," said she. "Are you going to board, young man?"

I looked at her inquiringly.

"Are you going to get your grub here or out of doors?" she said.

"Do the other boys get it here?" I asked.

"Some do, some don't. What I say is, Are you going to or not?"

"What does it cost?" I said.

"Threepence breakfast and threepence supper," said Mrs Nash.

I longed to ask her what was included in the bill of fare for these meals, but was too bashful.

"I think," said I, "I had better have them, then."

"All right," said she, shortly. "Can't have breakfast to-day; too late!

Supper's at nine, and lock-up at ten, there. Now you'd better cut, or you'll be late at work."

Yes, indeed! It would be no joke to be late my first morning.

"Please," said I, "can you tell me the way to Hawk Street?"

"Where's that?" said Mrs Nash. "I don't know. Follow the tram lines when you get out of the square, they'll take you to the City, and then--"

At this moment a youth appeared in the pa.s.sage about my age with a hat on one side of his head, a cane in his hand, and a pipe, the bowl as big as an egg-cup, in his mouth.

"I say, look here, Mrs Nash," said he, in a sleepy sort of voice; "why wasn't I called this morning?"

"So you was," said Mrs Nash.

"No, I wasn't," drawled the youth.

"That's what you say," observed the landlady. "I say you was; I called you myself."

"Then you ought to have knocked louder. How do you suppose a fellow who was out at a party overnight is to hear you unless you knock hard? I shall be late at the office, all through you."

Mrs Nash said "Shut up!" and the youth said "Shan't shut up!" and Mrs Nash inquired why, if he was late, he did not go off instead of dawdling about there, like a gentleman?

This taunt seemed to incense the youth, who put his nose in the air and walked out without another word.

"There," said Mrs Nash, pointing to his retreating form, "you'd best follow him; he's going to the City, the beauty."

I took the hint, and keeping "the beauty" at a respectful distance, followed in his lordly wake for about twenty minutes, until the rapidly- crowding streets told me I was in the City. Then, uncertain how to direct my steps, I quickened my pace and overtook him.

"Please can you tell me the way to Hawk Street?"

He took two or three good puffs out of his big pipe, and blew the smoke gracefully out of the corners of his mouth, and, by way of variety, out of his nose, and then said, in a condescending voice, "Yes, my man; first to the left and second to the right."

He certainly was a very self-a.s.sured young man, and struck me as quite grand in his manners. I had positively to screw up my courage to ask him, "I say, you are one of Mrs Nash's lodgers, aren't you?"

He stared at me, not quite sure what to make of me.