Читать книгу Confessions of a Tradesman онлайн

23 страница из 47

Again, I was free and still characterless. This time I suffered, as no doubt I deserved, hunger, thirst, and pain before I again entered employment, but when I did get a berth it promised fairer than any of my previous ones. Just how I fell in with this astounding piece of luck, I have forgotten, but what is indelibly impressed upon my memory is the fact that in my new situation I received board and clothing and two shillings a week—quite sufficient to pay for my poor little bed in a room which I shared with a cobbler, who used it for a workshop, toiling far into the night after I had gone to sleep; but while I was awake, entertaining me vastly with scraps of quaint philosophy. No wonder I was what they used to call an old-fashioned kid! But bless that dear old cobbler's heart. He was gentle, kind, and wise, except in one direction, but even in his cups I never remember hearing him say ought that a little child might not listen to, or ask and obtain the meaning of unsullied. He was very fond of me, and I of him. I daresay we meant a great deal to each other, meeting as we did in that little eddy out of the great rapids of life, and without visible effort supplying each other's needs. I well remember meeting him one day—it must have been when I was looking for a job—surrounded by a little mob of children "avin a gime wiv im" in the vernacular. Taking me gently by the arm he said, with a grand wave of his free hand, "Now here is an example for you, ill-mannered brats that you are, that can only shout 'Ullo, Trotty.' I know I trot, I know I am old, but you are ill-bred to remind me of it, and as for this dear child!" And much to my horror and entire discomfiture, he lifted me up and kissed me. I did not get over that, or escape the consequences of his ill-timed affection for a long time, I promise you.