Читать книгу The Vagaries of Tod and Peter онлайн

77 страница из 79

“There used to be a free night,” he continued, reverting again to the actual, “but the Corpeeration stopped it—I wonder w’y? It’s tuppence after six, that’s a shillin’ a week—’ow can pore boys get that?—an’ I promised ’im as I’d learn the others w’en I could get a chanst, when he’s learned me....”

Tony’s voice faltered, he was getting sleepy. He gave his smooth white arms another stroke, slipped into his nightshirt, and got into bed.

“E’ve give oi a shillin’ to pay for four more mornin’s, till ’e do go away,” he whispered ecstatically as he laid his head on the pillow, and Tony fell asleep.

That evening Tony’s elder brother “Earny,” who cleaned bicycles, and was ’prenticed to a dealer in the neighborhood, wanted his Sunday necktie, for he purposed to “walk out with his young lady.” He ran upstairs to the room he shared with Tony and another brother, to find the little boy fast asleep, worn out by unusual exercise and varied emotions.

Earny could not find his tie, and on lifting Tony’s trousers to see if by any chance it was hidden beneath them, a shilling rolled out of the pocket and finished spinning with a clang, just in the very centre of the patch of moonlight where a quarter of an hour earlier Tony had decided that he, at all events, “would ’ave a temple for ch’ice.”