he could look from time to time through a window at the slow
coal barges swinging down the river.

There were very few boys about the place; at lunch time he would wander
off by himself, and selecting his meal from a careful survey of several
pastry-cook's windows invest his money for the day in fancy cakes or a
tart. He missed the company of friends of his own age; even Fanny, his
oldest sister, he saw only on Sundays when she came back to the
Marshalsea from the place where she worked, to spend the day with her
family. It was only grown-up people that he saw most of the time, and
they were too busy with their own affairs to take much interest in the
small, shabby boy who looked just like any one of a thousand other
children of the streets. Of all the men at the factory it was only the
big clumsy fellow named Fagin who would stop to chat with the lad.

So it was that Charles was forced to make friends with whomever he
could, people of any age or condition, and was driven to spend much of
his spare time roaming about the streets, lounging by the river, reading
stray books by a candle in the prison or in the little attic where he
slept. It was not a boyhood that seemed to promise much.

In spite of this hard life which he led, Charles rarely lost his love of
fun or his natural high spirits. When he was about twelve years old his
father came into a little money, which enabled him to pay his debts so
that he was released from prison. He was also able to send his son to
school. Here he quickly blossomed out into a leader among the boys. He
was continually inventing new games, and queer languages, which were
made by adding extra syllables to ordinary words. Frequently he and
several of his school friends would go out into the street and talk to
each other in this language of their own, understanding what each other
said, but pretending to be foreigners to every one who heard them.

Charles was also continually writing short stories, which he lent to his
friends on payment of marbles or slate-pencils or white mice, which the
boys were very fond of keeping in their desks. He and a few others
built a small theatre and painted gorgeous scenery for it, and then gave
regular plays, which he specially wrote for the theatre, to the great
entertainment of the other boys and the masters. This comfortable school
life was a great contrast to the hard knocks he had to endure when he
was at the blacking factory, and he flourished under