And being in a chatty humour, as she generally was after dinner, and when about the third “brown” had been earned of her, she began to talk exactly as I wished her to. She told me that she had known many costermongers, good buyers and good sellers, and yet who were always kept in the background through having a hoarse, or a gruff, or a hollow voice.
“Of course,” said she, “there are things—common things, such as taters, and onions, and cabbages—which are sure to go in whatever voice they ’re called, if so be that a man has anything like a reg’lar round, because people knows his time and looks out for him; but with goods which comes promisc’ous, and which are only to be got off by forcin’, it’s different. Now, there’s fish. There may be fish to-morrow, and there mayn’t. Even the salesmen in the market can’t say for certain. And then, it may be cheap, or it may be dear. Say it’s cheap. Say it’s soles, and that you buy a lot of ’em. How many do you think you’ll sell if you go crawling along with ’em, growling out, ‘Here’s soles, good soles!’ in the same voice as does for turnips or taters? Why, you won’t take enough to buy fat to fry your own supper in. You must put your heart into it, and try and make yourself believe how wonderful cheap your soles are, till you get into quite a perspiration about ’em. You drive sudden and sharp round corners of streets, and at the same moment you pipe up, ‘Dover soles! lovely soles! splendid soles! Big as plaice, and all alive! all alive! all alive!’ and this you keep up, driving along brisk and keeping up the tune. Presently you set your eyes on your soles, and see a pair which is so large, and so lovely, that you really can’t help stopping, which you do as sudden as you turned the corner. ‘Oh, I say,’ says you, dropping the tune and taking to conversation, ‘here’s a pair of whackers! blowed if they don’t get finer the lower we get into the pad! Just look here, ladies—there’s a pair of soles for you!—three-pence!’
“That’s how to sell soles!” chuckled Mrs. Winkship, bringing her fat hands together with a hearty spank to illustrate the manner in which the “pair” should be joined at the very instant their price was disclosed. “It’s the same with fruit. Bless your soul, there’s a way of crying your fruit, so as to make everybody’s mouth water that hears you—specially stone-fruit Why, when I was a gal,” continued Mrs. Winkship, “I was wonderful good at greengages; as good at anything mind you as here and there one, but at ’gages I topped ’em all. It was only the voice, and knowing how to pick your words; ‘juicy greengage!’ ‘blooming greengage!’ ‘meller greengage for eating or preserving!’ Many a hot summer’s afternoon have I made a pretty pocket, with-only just a silk handkercher over my shoulders, and half a sieve of ’gages under my arm.”
Was mine a musical voice? I didn’t ask Mrs. Winkship at the time the above narrated conversation took place, but the subject remained pretty constantly in my mind. My stepmother was considered a pretty singer, and there were several of her tunes which I knew completely, and used to sing to the baby of nights; still because I knew and could follow, at least to my own satisfaction, every turn in “Young Riley” and the “Bould Soger Boy,” it was by no means certain that I had a voice for Dover soles or greengage plums.
Had I? Never had the question presented itself so forcibly to me as on the morning on which I had expressed to my father my determination to submit no longer to the pummelling of my stepmother. The worst of it was, my only chance of escape from it, as it appeared to me, was to become a barker, and that, according to Mrs. Winkship, on whom I placed every reliance, could never be unless my voice was suitable. It wasn’t easy to test it. I tried several calls under my breath with tolerable success, but was I justified in taking the important step I meditated on such inconclusive grounds? So all-engrossing was the subject as I sat on the doorstep with my sister Polly in my arms, that presently she made an unchecked spring, and went with a crash, and a squall, rolling over the stones.
Mrs. Burke was down on me like a thunderbolt. Without waiting for an explanation, or even to pick up Polly, she seized me by the hair, and bumped my head several times against the door-jamb. She made a claw at my ears to wring them, and missing them through a wriggle on my part, scored my cheek with her nails, and set the blood trickling. She punched me about as though she was one prize-fighter, and I was another.
“I’ll wring your ugly shnout off, you dirty shwine,” said she, and proceeded to take my nose between the knuckles of her fore and middle fingers. The pain was enough to drive me mad.
I must have been mad or very nearly, for I made a scramble at her cruel hand, and getting her thumb in my mouth, I dug my teeth into it. It must have hurt her very much, judging from the way she halloed. She let go my face, and in an instant I ducked under her arms, and bolted up the alley as fast as my legs would carry me.
Chapter XI. In which I spend an afternoon in Smithfield market, and have a narrow escape from falling once more into the clutches of Mrs. Burke.
Whether Mrs. Burke (I would much rather speak of her so than by any other name, if the reader has no objection) followed me with a view to giving chase, is more than I can say.
Once out of Fryingpan Alley, I never once turned or looked behind me. I passed good Mrs. Winkship sitting on her coke-measure, and she, judging, as I suppose, from my affrighted appearance, that I was fleeing from danger, called out, “Run, Jimmy, run! good luck to you.” Arrived at the mouth of the alley, a boy with three-pen’orth of hot rum in his hand was at that moment turning in, and to avoid running against him I turned to the left, taking Mrs. Winkship’s parting advice earnestly to heart.
When I was thousands of miles from England, the thought would often come into my head, how would it have been if that boy had not been coming in with the rum and water, and I had turned to the right instead of the left? Had I done so, and kept straight on, I should by and by have found myself in the parks, in the fields, out in the country. Then I might have become a plough-boy, a field labourer,—a young fellow with a smock-frock, and a “billycock” hat and cloddy boots; I might—. But there, where’s the use of indulging in “ifs,” and “buts,” and “might have beens?” To the left it was. Down Turnmill Street, through Cow Cross, and still straight on until Smithfield Market was reached.
If it was not my good luck that inclined me to run in this direction, that it was so, was my very decided impression at the time. Had Mrs. Burke followed me, my legs might not have been of much use as against hers in a running-match over a level course; but in Smithfield Market it was odds in my favour. I was well used to the pens, being in the habit of spending my rare playtimes there in the games of “touch” and “chevy;” and unless Mrs. Burke was as good at vaulting and jumping as she was at punching and pummelling, she would have had no chance against me.
It was not a market-day, and the place was as quiet and as deserted as it always is at such times. Finding myself amongst the pens, my instinct of self-defence led me to hurry to that part of the market where the pigs were sold. I had heard boys of my acquaintance say, “Oh, don’t let’s play in the pig part, it’s so precious slippery.” So it was, and especially to people who were not used to it.
I climbed to a top bar in the pig shambles, and looked anxiously about me, and soon convinced myself that although Mrs. Burke might have set out after me, she had either lost sight of me or run herself to a standstill. My perch was a capital one for surveying purposes, and I could see all round about for a considerable distance. Everybody, however, that I could make out was quite strange, and did not even look towards me.