We did not feel the cold too much at Lant Street, for besides our ordinary kitchen fire there was Mr Ibbs's locksmith's brazier: he always kept a flame beneath the coals of it, you could never say what might not turn up that would need making up or melting down. On this night there were three or four boys at it, sweating the gold off sovereigns. Besides them was Mrs Sucksby in her great chair, a couple of babies in a cradle at her side; and a boy and a girl who were rooming with us then— John Vroom, and Dainty Warren.
John was a thin, dark, knifish boy of about fourteen. He was always eating. I believe he had the worm. This night he was cracking peanuts, and throwing their shells on the floor.
Mrs Sucksby saw him do it. 'Will you watch your manners?' she said. 'You make a mess, and Sue shall have to tidy it.'
John said, 'Poor Sue, ain't my heart bleeding.'
He never cared for me. I think he was jealous. He had come to our house as a baby, like me; and like mine, his mother had died and made an orphan of him. But he was such a queer- looking child, no-one would take him off Mrs Sucksby's hands. She had kept him till he was four or five, then put him on the parish— even then, however, he was a devil to get rid of, always running back from the workhouse: we were forever opening the shop-door and finding him sleeping on the step. She had got the master of a ship to take him at last, and he sailed as far as China; when he came back to the Borough after that, he did it with money, to brag. The money had lasted a month. Now he kept handy at Lant Street by doing jobs for Mr Ibbs; and besides them, ran mean 9
little dodges of his own, with Dainty to help him.
She was a great red-haired girl of three-and-twenty, and more or less a simpleton. She had neat white hands, though, and could sew like anything. John had her at this time stitching dog-skins onto stolen dogs, to make them seem handsomer breeds than what they really were.
He was doing a deal with a dog-thief. This man had a couple of bitches: when the bitches came on heat he would walk the streets with them, tempting dogs away from their owners, then charging a ten pounds' ransom before he'd give them back. That works best with sporting dogs, and dogs with sentimental mistresses; some owners, however, will never pay up— you could cut off their little dog's tail and post it to them and never see a bean, they are that heartless— and the dogs that John's pal was landed with he would throttle, then sell to him at a knocked-down price. I can't say what John did with the meat— passed it off as rabbit, perhaps, or ate it himself. But the skins, as I have said, he had Dainty stitching to plain street-dogs, which he was selling as quality breeds at the Whitechapel Market.
The bits of fur left over she was sewing together to cover him a greatcoat. She was sewing it, this night. She had the collar done and the shoulders and half the sleeves, and there were about forty different sorts of dog in it already. The smell of it was powerful, before
a fire, and drove our own dog— which was not the old fighter, Jack, but another, brown dog we called Charley Wag, after the thief in the story— into a perfect fever.
Now and then Dainty would hold the coat up for us all to see how well it looked.
'It's a good job for Dainty that you ain't a deal taller, John,' I said. one time she did this.
'It's a good job for you that you ain't dead,' he answered. He was short, and felt it.
'Though a shame for the rest of us. I should like a bit of your skin upon the sleeves of my coat— perhaps upon the cuffs of it, where I wipes my nose. You should look right at home, beside a bulldog or a boxer.'
He took up his knife, that he always kept by him, and tested the edge with his thumb.
'I ain't quite decided yet,' he said, 'but what I shan't come one night, and take a bit of skin off while you are sleeping. What should you say, Dainty, if I was to make you sew up that?' *
Dainty put her hand to her mouth and screamed. She wore a ring, too large for her hand; she had wound a bit of thread about the finger beneath, and the thread was quite black.
'You tickler!' she said.
John smiled, and tapped with the point of his knife against a broken tooth. Mrs Sucksby said,
'That's enough from you, or I'll knock your bloody head off. I won't have Sue made nervous.'
I said at once, that if I thought I should be made nervous by an infant like John Vroom, I should cut my throat. John said he should like to cut it for me. Then Mrs Sucksby leaned from her chair and hit him— just as she had once leaned, on that other night, all that time before, and hit poor Flora; and as she had leaned and hit others, in the years 10
in between— all for my sake.
John looked for a second as if he should like to strike her back; then he looked at me, as if he should like to strike me harder. Then Dainty shifted in her seat, and he turned and struck her.
Beats me,' he said when he had done it, 'why everyone is so down on me.'
Dainty had started to cry. She reached for his sleeve. 'Never mind their hard words, Johnny,' she said. 'I sticks to you, don't I?'
'You sticks, all right,' he answered. 'Like shit to a shovel.' He pushed her hand away, and she sat rocking in her chair, huddled over the dog-skin coat and weeping into her stitches.
'Hush now, Dainty,' said Mrs Sucksby. 'You are spoiling your nice work.'
She cried for a minute. Then one of the boys at the brazier burned his finger on a hot coin, and started off swearing; and she screamed with laughter. John put another peanut to his mouth and spat the shell upon the floor.
Then we sat quiet, for perhaps a quarter of an hour. Charley Wag lay before the fire and twitched, chasing hansoms in his sleep— his tail was kinked where a cab-wheel had caught it. I got out cards, for a game of Patience. Dainty sewed. Mrs Sucksby dozed. John sat perfectly idle; but would now and then look over at the cards I dealt, to tell me where to place them.
'Jack of Diggers on the Bitch of Hearts,' he would say. Or, 'Lor! Ain't you slow?'
'Ain't you hateful?' I would answer, keeping on with my own game. The pack was an old one, the cards as limp as rags. A man had been killed once, in a fight over a crooked game that was played with those cards. I set them out a final time and turned my chair a little, so that John might not see how they fell.
And then, all at once, one of the babies started out of its slumber and began to cry, and Charley Wag woke up and gave a bark. There was a sudden gust of wind that made the fire leap high in the chimney, and the rain came harder upon the coals and made them hiss. Mrs Sucksby opened her eyes. 'What's that?' she said.
'What's what?' said John.
Then we heard it: a thump, in the passage that led to the back of the house. Then another thump came. Then the thumps became footsteps. The footsteps stopped at the kitchen door— there was a second of silence— and then, slow and heavy, a knock.
Knock— knock— knock. Like that. Like the knocking on a door in a play, when the dead man's ghost comes back. Not a thief's knock,
anyway: that is quick and light. You knew what sort of business it was, when you heard that. This business, however, might be anything, anything at all. This business might be bad.
So we all thought. We looked at one another, and Mrs Sucksby reached into the cradle to draw the baby from it and stop its cries against her bosom; and John took hold of Charley Wag and held his jaws shut. The boys at the brazier fell silent as mice. Mr Ibbs said quietly, 'Anyone expected? Boys, put this lot away. Never mind your burning fingers. If it's the blues, we're done for.'
They began picking at the sovereigns and the gold they had sweated from them, wrapping them in handkerchiefs, putting the handkerchiefs beneath their hats or in 11
their trouser pockets. One of them— it was Mr Ibbs's oldest nephew, Phil— went quickly to the door and stood beside it, his back flat to the wall, his hand in his coat.