The subject Angland has broached is a favourite one of the sub-inspector’s, moreover, he is anxious to know who Claude is. So he determines to wait a few minutes longer.
“Thank you, sir,” he goes on, acknowledging Claude’s compliment. “One word more: the parents here, if they can spare threepence a week for schooling their children, pack them off there to get them out of the way, and Sunday Schools are in favour chiefly as a means of getting a quiet afternoon. The kids are bundled off to school; whether they go there or not is another thing.”
“Now that boy I found amongst the barrels, how does he get a living? Does he go to school?”
“Oh, he’s a newspaper boy, likely enough,” replies the police-officer. “He told you about his ticket, didn’t he? The boys get a dozen papers for 9d., and on handing over that sum to the publisher they receive a ticket, which, when presented at another part of the paper office, brings them the required number of ‘Evening Newses,’ or ‘Stars,’ as the case may be.”
“These boys? Well, they’re a class really worth study, sir. That is, if you’re fond of such things. They’re a wild, untamable herd of free-lances, that’s what they are.”
“I suppose there’s a large army of them?”
“Yes. And I suppose nearly half of them are on their own hook, and many of them combine the professions of loafer, thief, and larrikin with their legitimate calling. They’re bright lads,—have to be,—with any amount of courage, and hard as nails. They’re worth protecting; and they should be, by the newspaper proprietors or the Government. But here’s your cab, sir, I think. Any time you like, you’ll find me at the ‘Central,’ or my whereabouts if I’m away. My name? Sub-Inspector Chime, at your service, sir. Good-night.”
The cab rattles up. Claude bids adieu to his small guide, and leaves him with more silver in his mouth than it has ever held before. Then our hero gets back to his hotel, and finds himself so far recovered next day as to be able to set forth for a stroll in the evening. It is not long before the genus Newsboy forces itself upon his notice, and he sets to work to study them carefully. Who that has done so has not been amply repaid? A new class established in the community by the necessities of an advancing civilization,—a class composed, for the most part, of neglected youth, whose useful services to the needs of the public are recompensed by starvation wages and ill-usage. Of course there are many bad ones amongst these newsboys,—these poor, little, ragged, dirty-faced, barefooted arabs of our colonial streets,—but on the whole they are wonderfully honest, hard-working little souls. Amongst the best of them are the paid boys in the employ of some one who has purchased the sole right of street sale of certain thoroughfares or parts of thoroughfares.
Let the unattached newspaper boy, who, finding trade slack amongst the idlers at his own particular corner, come poaching upon a preserve. In such a case, the reception of a yellow ant which has fallen upon a black ant camp, or the welcome of a stranger dog in a country town by the local canines of the place, is tepid, compared with the fever heat of combined patriotism shown by the “regular boys” in driving off the intruder. Throwing papers and petty jealousy to the winds, the unwary invader is soon hurried over the frontier.
Near the book-stall at the corner of King Street Claude finds six or seven very small newsboys. Amongst them is a little, bare-legged, fairy-like girl-child in a dirty red frock, also engaged in disposing of mental food from one of the great “Fourth-Estate” mills of the city.