e heard roaring in his sleep, "_And_ the
next article?" The meanest looking man lived next door to him. Every
morning this man put on a clean white shirt, which sounds like a
splendid beginning, but his other clothes were of the seediest, and he
came and went shivering, raising his shoulders to his ears and spreading
his hands over his chest as if anxious to hide his shirt rather than to
display it. He and the happy husband were nicknamed Before and After,
they were so like the pictorial advertisement of Man before and after he
has tried Someone's lozenges. But it is rash to judge by outsides; Tommy
and Shovel one day tracked Before to his place of business, and it
proved to be a palatial eating-house, long, narrow, padded with red
cushions; through the door they saw the once despised, now in beautiful
black clothes, the waistcoat a mere nothing, as if to give his shirt a
chance at last, a towel over his arm, and to and fro he darted,
saying "Yessirquitesosir" to the toffs on the seats, shouting
"Twovegonebeef--onebeeronetartinahurry" to someone invisible, and
pocketing twopences all day long, just like a lord. On the same floor as
Before and After lived the large family of little Pikes, who quarrelled
at night for the middle place in the bed, and then chips of ceiling fell
into the room below, tenant Jim Ricketts and parents, lodger the young
woman we have been trying all these doors for. Her the police snapped up
on a charge; that made Tommy want to hide himself--child-desertion.

Shovel was the person best worth listening to on the subject (observe
him, the centre of half a dozen boys), and at first he was for the
defence, being a great stickler for the rights of mothers. But when the
case against the girl leaked out, she need not look to him for help. The
police had found the child in a basket down an area, and being knowing
ones they pinched it to make it cry, and then they pretended to go away.
Soon the mother, who was watching hard by to see if it fell into kind
hands, stole to her baby to comfort it, "and just as she were a kissing
on it and blubbering, the perlice copped her."

"The slut!" said disgusted Shovel, "what did she hang about for?" and in
answer to a trembling question from Tommy he replied, decisively, "Six
months hard."

"Next case" was probably called immediately, but Tommy vanished, as if
he had been sentenced and removed to the cells.

Never again, unless he wanted six months hard, must he go