By Sheer Pluck: A Tale of the Ashanti War. Henty George Alfred
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a hit,” he said, “I ain’t tasted nothing today.”
Frank broke the bread in half and gave a portion to him.
“What a lot there is going on here!” Frank said.
“Law!” the boy answered, “that ain’t nothing to what it is of a morning. That’s the time, ‘special on the mornings of the flower market. It’s hard lines if a chap can’t pick up a tanner or even a bob then.”
“How?” Frank asked eagerly.
“Why, by holding horses, helping to carry out plants, and such like. You seems a green ‘un, you do. Up from the country, eh? Don’t seem like one of our sort.”
“Yes,” Frank said, “I’m just up from the country. I thought it would be easy to get a place in London, but I don’t find it so.”
“A place!” the boy repeated scornfully. “I should like any one to see me in a place. It’s better a hundred times to be your own master.”
“Even if you do want a piece of bread sometimes?” Frank put in.
“Yes,” the boy said. “When it ain’t market day and ye haven’t saved enough to buy a few papers or boxes of matches it does come hard. In winter the times is bad, but in summer we gets on fairish, and there ain’t nothing to grumble about. Are you out of work yourself?”
“Yes,” Frank answered, “I’m on the lookout for a job.”
“You’d have a chance here in the morning,” said the boy, looking at him. “You look decent, and might get a job unloading. They won’t have us at no price, if they can help it.”
“I will come and try anyhow,” Frank said.
That evening Frank told his friend, the porter, that he thought of going out early next morning to try and pick up odd jobs at Covent Garden.
“Don’t you think of it,” the porter said. “There’s nothing worse for a lad than taking to odd jobs. It gets him into bad ways and bad company. Don’t you hurry. I have spoken to lots of my mates, and they’re all on the lookout for you. We on the platform can’t do much. It ain’t in our line, you see; but in the goods department, where they are constant with vans and wagons and such like, they are likely enough to hear of something before long.”
That night, thinking matters over in bed, Frank determined to go down to the docks and see if he could get a place as cabin boy. He had had this idea in his mind ever since he lost his money, and had only put it aside in order that he might, if possible, get some berth on shore which might seem likely in the end to afford him a means of making his way up again. It was not that he was afraid of the roughness of a cabin boy’s life; it was only because he knew that it would be so very long before, working his way up from boy to able bodied seaman, he could obtain a mate’s certificate, and so make a first step up the ladder. However, he thought that even this would be better than going as a wagoner’s boy, and he accordingly crossed London Bridge, turned down Eastcheap, and presently found himself in Ratcliff Highway. He was amused here at the nautical character of the shops, and presently found himself staring into a window full of foreign birds, for the most part alive in cages, among which, however, were a few cases of stuffed birds.
“How stupid I have been!” he thought to himself. “I wonder I never thought of it before! I can stuff birds and beasts at any rate a deal better than those wooden looking things. I might have a chance of getting work at some naturalist’s shop. I will get a directory and take down all the addresses in London, and then go around.”
He now became conscious of a conversation going on between a little old man with a pair of thick horn rimmed spectacles and a sailor who had a dead parrot and a cat in his hand.
“I really cannot undertake them,” the old man said. “Since the death of my daughter I have had but little time to attend to that branch. What with buying and selling, and feeding and attending to the live ones, I have no time for stuffing. Besides, if the things were poisoned, they would not be worth stuffing.”
“It isn’t the question of worth, skipper,” the sailor said; “and I don’t say, mind ye, that these here critturs was pisoned, only if you looks at it that this was the noisiest bird and the worst tempered thievingest cat in the neighborhood—though, Lord bless you, my missus wouldn’t allow it for worlds—why, you know, when they were both found stiff and cold this morning people does have a sort of a suspicion as how they’ve been pisoned;” and he winked one eye in a portentous manner, and grinned hugely. “The missus she’s in a nice taking, screeching, and yelling as you might hear her two cables’ length away, and she turns round on me and will have it as I’d a hand in the matter. Well, just to show my innocence, I offers to get a glass case for ‘em and have ‘em stuffed, if it cost me a couple of pounds. I wouldn’t care if they fell all to pieces a week afterwards, so that it pacified the old woman just at present. If I can’t get ‘em done I shall ship at once, for the place will be too hot to hold me. So you can’t do it nohow?”
The old man shook his head, and the sailor was just turning off when Frank went up to him:
“Will you please wait a moment? Can I speak to you, sir, a minute?” he asked the old man.
The naturalist went into his shop, and Frank followed him.
“I can stuff birds and animals, sir,” he said. “I think I really stuff them well, for some which I did for amusement were sold at ten shillings a case, and the man who bought them of me told me they would be worth four times as much in London. I am out of work, sir, and very very anxious to get my living. You will find me hard working and honest. Do give me a chance. Let me stuff that cat and parrot for the sailor. If you are not satisfied then, I will go away and charge nothing for it.”
The man looked at him keenly.
“I will at any rate give you a trial,” he said. Then he went to the door and called in the sailor. “This lad tells me he can stuff birds. I know nothing about him, but I believe he is speaking truthfully. If you like to intrust them to him he will do his best. If you’re not satisfied he will make no charge.”
Much pleased at seeing a way out of his dilemma, the sailor placed the dead animals on the counter.
“Now,” the old man said to Frank, “you can take these out into the back yard and skin them. Then you can go to work in that back room. You will find arsenical soap, cotton wool, wires, and everything else you require there. This has been a fine cat,” he said, looking at the animal.
“Yes, it has been a splendid creature,” Frank answered. “It is a magnificent macaw also.”
“Ah! you know it is a macaw!” the old man said.
“Of course,” Frank said simply; “it has a tail.”
The old man then furnished Frank with two or three sharp knives and scissors. Taking the bird and cat, he went out into the yard and in the course of an hour had skinned them both. Then he returned to the shop and set to work in the room behind.
“May I make a group of them?” he asked.
“Do them just as you like,” the old man said.
After settling upon his subject, Frank set to work, and, except that he went out for five minutes to buy and eat a penny loaf, continued his work till nightfall. The old man came in several times to look at him, but each time went out again without making a remark. At six o’clock Frank laid down his tools.
“I will come again tomorrow, sir,” he said.
The old man nodded, and Frank went home in high spirits. There was a prospect at last of getting something to do, and that in a line most congenial to his own tastes.
The old man looked up when he entered next morning.
“I shall not come in today,” he remarked. “I will wait to see them finished.”
Working without interruption till the evening, Frank finished them to his satisfaction, and enveloped them with many wrappings of thread to keep them in precisely the attitudes in which he had placed them.
“They