t, that's all. Good wages and all
found, that's your kind."

"I don't suppose it's easy," George said; "but it seems to me people
could get something to do if they tried."

"Tried!" the boy said bitterly. "Do yer think we don't try! Why, we
are always trying to earn a copper or two. Why, we begins at three
o'clock in the morning when the market-carts come in, and we goes on
till they comes out of that there theater at night, just trying to
pick up a copper. Sometimes one does and sometimes one doesn't. It's a
good day, I tell you, when we have made a tanner by the end of it.
Don't tell me! And now as to this ere stable; yer means it?"

"Yes," George said; "certainly I mean it."

"Wery well then, you be here at this corner at nine o'clock. I will go
before that and square it with Ned. That's the chap I was speaking
of."

"I had better give you something to give him," George said. "Will a
shilling do?"

"Yes, a bob will do for three or four nights. Are you going to trust
me with it?"

"Of course I am," George replied. "I am sure you wouldn't be so mean
as to do me out of it; besides, you told me that you never stole money
and those sort of things."

"It aint everyone as would trust me with a bob for all that," Bill
replied; "and yer are running a risk, yer know, and I tells yer if yer
goes on with that sort of game yer'll get took in rarely afore yer've
done. Well, hand it over. I aint a-going to bilk yer."

The Shadow spoke carelessly, but this proof of confidence on the part
of his companion really touched him, and as he went off he said to
himself, "He aint a bad sort, that chap, though he is so precious
green. I must look arter him a bit and see he don't get into no
mischief."

George, on his part, as he walked away down into the Strand again,
felt that he had certainly run a risk in thus intrusting a tenth of
his capital to his new acquaintance; but the boy's face and manner had
attracted him, and he felt that, although the Shadow's notions of
right and wrong might be of a confused nature, he meant to act
straight toward him.

George passed the intervening hours before the time named for his
meeting in Covent Garden in staring into the shop windows in the
Strand, and in wondering at the constant stream of vehicles and foot
passengers flowing steadily out westward. He was nearly knocked under
the wheels of the vehicles a score of times from his ignorance as to
the rule of the road, and at last he was s