circumstances
over which they had little control, the universal decree of the ship's
company in short, drove them on to the stage to face successive
audiences side by side as The Brothers Boo-Hoo. Neither dreamed of
appearing there without the other, although off it, save for a few
grave rehearsals, they rarely met. They were not vocalists, but they
bowed to popular demand, preserving their stolid, immobile demeanours,
and sang in accents sternly and unintelligibly Gaelic.

Their turn over, the First Lieutenant announced a juggling display by
Boy Buggins. Boy Buggins appeared, very spick and span in a brand new
suit of Number Threes, and proceeded to juggle with canteen eggs,
Indian clubs and mess crockery (while the caterer of his mess held his
breath to the verge of apoplexy) in a manner quite bewildering.

The Captain took his pipe out of his mouth and leaned towards the
Commander. "Where did the lad pick up these antics?" he inquired,
smiling.

The Commander shook his head. "I don't know, sir. Probably in a
circus."

As a matter of fact, Boy Buggins did start life (as far as his memory
carried him) in grubby pink tights and spangles. But he followed in
the train of no circus; it was in front of public-houses in a district
of London where such pitches recurred with dreary frequency that he cut
capers on a strip of carpet. He visited them nightly in the company of
a stalwart individual who also wore pink tights. After each
performance the stalwart one ordained an interval for refreshment. On
good days he used to reach home very much refreshed indeed.

They called it home (it was a cellar) because they slept there; and as
often as not a thin woman with tragic eyes was there waiting for them.
She used to hold out her hand with a timid, shamed gesture, and there
was money in it which the man took. If he had had a good day or she a
bad one--it was always one or the other--the stalwart one beat the
woman, or, in his own phraseology, "put it acrost" her. But ultimately
he had one good day too many, or else he felt unusually stalwart, for
the woman lay motionless in the corner of the cellar where she was
flung, and wouldn't answer when he had finished kicking her.

The police took the stalwart one away to swing for it, and "the parish"
took the thin woman away in a deal box. Boy Buggins passed, via an
industrial training ship, into the Royal Navy, and earned the
Distinguished Conduct Medal before this par