n' don't come out here or go to the other parts o'
God's green 'arth is 'cause we can't help ourselves an' don't know how--
or what--don't know nothin' in fact!'

"`That's a busted-up state o' ignorance, no doubt' said I, in a soothin'
sort o' way, for I see'd the man was riled pretty bad by ancient
memories, an' looked gittin' waxier. He wore a black eye, too, caught
in a free fight the night before, which didn't improve his looks. `You
said _we_ just now,' says I. `Was you one o' them?'

"`Of course I was,' says he, tamin' down a little, `an' I'd bin one o'
them yet--if not food for worms by this time--if it hadn't bin for a
dook as took pity on me.'

"`What's a dook?' says I.

"`A dook?' says he. `Why, he's a _dook_, you know; a sort o' markis--
somewheres between a lord an' a king. I don't know zackly where, an
hang me if I care; but they're a bad lot are some o' them dooks--rich as
Pharaoh, king o' J'rus'lem, an' hard as nails--though I'm bound for to
say they ain't all alike. Some on 'em's no better nor costermongers,
others are _men_; men what keeps in mind that the same God made us all
an' will call us all to the same account, an' that the same kind o'
worms 'll finish us all off at last. But this dook as took pity on me
was a true blue. He wasn't one o' the hard sort as didn't care a rush
for us so long as his own stummick was full. Neether was he one o' the
butter-mouths as dursen't say boo to a goose. He spoke out to me like a
man, an' he knew well enough that I'd bin born in the London slums, an'
that my daddy had bin born there before me, an that my mother had caught
her death o' cold through havin' to pawn her only pair o' boots to pay
my school fees an' then walk barefutt to the court in a winter day to
answer for not sendin' her boy to the board school--_her_ send me to
school!--she might as well have tried to send daddy himself; an' him out
o' work, too, an' all on us starvin'. My dook, when he hear about it
a'most bust wi' passion. I hear 'im arterwards talkin' to a overseer,
or somebody, "confound it," says he--no, not quite that, for my dook he
_never_ swore, only he said somethin' pretty stiff--"these people are
starvin'," says he, "an' pawnin' their things for food to keep 'em
alive, an' they can't git work nohow," says he, "an' yet you worry them
out o' body an' soul for school fees!" I didn't hear no more, for the
overseer smoothed 'im down somehows. But that dook--that good _man