little companion sat down to
discuss in the most retired box in the place, and conversed in low
tones.

"What was it brought you to Yarmouth, Walleye?" asked Mr Jones.

"Call me Billy," said the boy, "I like it better."

"Well, Billy--and, by the way, you may call me Morley--my name's Jones,
but, like yourself, I have a preference. Now, then, what brought you
here?"

"H'm, that involves a story--a hanecdote, if I may so speak," replied
this precocious youngster with much gravity. "You see, some time arter
I runn'd away from the work'us, I fell'd in with an old gen'lem'n with a
bald head an' a fat corpus. Do 'ee happen to know, Mr Morley, 'ow it
is that bald heads an' fat corpuses a'most always go together?"

Morley replied that he felt himself unable to answer that difficult
question; but supposed that as good-humour was said to make people fat,
perhaps it made them bald also.

"I dun know," continued Billy; "anyhow, this old gen'lem'n he took'd a
fancy to me, an' took'd me home to his 'otel; for he didn't live in
London--wos there only on a wisit at the time he felled in love with me
at first sight. Well, he give me a splendacious suit of noo clo'es, an
'ad me put to a school, where I soon larned to read and write; an' I do
b'lieve wos on the highroad to be Lord Mayor of London, when the old
schoolmaster died, before I'd bin two year there, an' the noo un wos so
fond o' the bangin' system that I couldn't stand it, an' so bid 'em all
a tender farewell, an' took to the streets agin. The old gen'lem'n he
comed three times from Yarmouth, where he belonged, for to see me arter
I wos put to the school, an' I had a sort o' likin' for him, but not
knowin' his name, and only been aweer that he lived at Yarmouth, I
thought I'd have no chance o' findin' him. Over my subsikint career
I'll draw a wail; it's enough to say I didn't like either it or my pals,
so I made up my mind at last to go to Yarmouth an' try to find the old
gen'lem'n as had adopted me--that's what he said he'd done to me. W'en
I'd prigged enough o' wipes to pay my fare down, I comed away,--an' here
I am."

"Have you seen the old gentleman?" asked Morley, after a pause.

"No, only just arrived this arternoon."

"And you don't know his name, nor where he lives?"

"No."

"And how did you expect to escape bein' nabbed and put in limbo as a
vagrant?" inquired Morley.

"By gittin' employment, of coorse, from some _respectable_ gen'lem'n
like you