d more suddenly than he
looked for, and he had had no time to conceal himself.

'Poor fellow!' said Nicholas, 'your hard fate denies you any friend but
one, and he is nearly as poor and helpless as yourself.'

'May I--may I go with you?' asked Smike, timidly. 'I will be your
faithful hard-working servant, I will, indeed. I want no clothes,' added
the poor creature, drawing his rags together; 'these will do very well.
I only want to be near you.'

'And you shall,' cried Nicholas. 'And the world shall deal by you as it
does by me, till one or both of us shall quit it for a better. Come!'

With these words, he strapped his burden on his shoulders, and, taking
his stick in one hand, extended the other to his delighted charge; and
so they passed out of the old barn, together.

CHAPTER 14

Having the Misfortune to treat of none but Common People, is necessarily
of a Mean and Vulgar Character

In that quarter of London in which Golden Square is situated, there is
a bygone, faded, tumble-down street, with two irregular rows of tall
meagre houses, which seem to have stared each other out of countenance
years ago. The very chimneys appear to have grown dismal and melancholy,
from having had nothing better to look at than the chimneys over the
way. Their tops are battered, and broken, and blackened with smoke; and,
here and there, some taller stack than the rest, inclining heavily to
one side, and toppling over the roof, seems to mediate taking revenge
for half a century's neglect, by crushing the inhabitants of the garrets
beneath.

The fowls who peck about the kennels, jerking their bodies hither and
thither with a gait which none but town fowls are ever seen to adopt,
and which any country cock or hen would be puzzled to understand, are
perfectly in keeping with the crazy habitations of their owners. Dingy,
ill-plumed, drowsy flutterers, sent, like many of the neighbouring
children, to get a livelihood in the streets, they hop, from stone to
stone, in forlorn search of some hidden eatable in the mud, and can
scarcely raise a crow among them. The only one with anything approaching
to a voice, is an aged bantam at the baker's; and even he is hoarse, in
consequence of bad living in his last place.

To judge from the size of the houses, they have been, at one time,
tenanted by persons of better condition than their present occupants;
but they are now let off, by the week, in floors or rooms, and every
door has almo