h his
pillow.
While he was giving us these confidences, unfortunately, his eyes came
to rest, at first accidentally, then wistfully, then with a horrid gleam
in them, on the little dog, which was fooling about on the top of the
sausage-machine, and his hands went out toward it convulsively, whereat
David, in sudden fear, seized the dog in one arm and gallantly clenched
his other fist, and then Joey begged his pardon and burst into tears,
each one of which he flung against the wall, where it exploded with a
bang.
David refused to pardon him unless he promised on wood never to look in
that way at the dog again, but Joey said promises were nothing to him
when he was short of sausages, and so his wisest course would be to
present the dog to David. Oh, the joy of David when he understood that
the little dog he had saved was his very own! I can tell you he was now
in a hurry to be off before Joey had time to change his mind.
"All I ask of you," Joey said with a break in his voice, "is to call him
after me, and always to give him a sausage, sonny, of a Saturday night."
There was a quiet dignity about Joey at the end, which showed that he
might have risen to high distinction but for his fatal passion.
The last we saw of him was from the street. He was waving his tongue at
us in his attractive, foolish way, and Josy was poised on Joeykin's hand
like a butterfly that had alighted on a flower. We could not exactly see
old Joey, but we saw his feet, and so feared the worst. Of course they
are not everything they should be, but one can't help liking them.
XXIII. Pilkington's
On attaining the age of eight, or thereabout, children fly away from the
Gardens, and never come back. When next you meet them they are ladies
and gentlemen holding up their umbrellas to hail a hansom.
Where the girls go to I know not, to some private place, I suppose, to
put up their hair, but the boys have gone to Pilkington's. He is a man
with a cane. You may not go to Pilkington's in knickerbockers made
by your mother, make she ever so artfully. They must be real
knickerbockers. It is his stern rule. Hence the fearful fascination of
Pilkington's.
He may be conceived as one who, baiting his hook with real
knickerbockers, fishes all day in the Gardens, which are to him but a
pool swarming with small fry.
Abhorred shade! I know not what manner of man thou art in the flesh,
sir, but figure thee bearded and blackavised, and of a lean t
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