"I am glad you did it," said Meg, with a flush on her cheek and approval in her eye.
"That's what I does," repeated the cripple, with another swagger of his pendant body.
Meg began to feel a great respect for this cripple, who seemed to her to have the spirit of a lion.
"How are you going to earn money?" she asked, feeling an admiring friendship now justified the question.
The cripple, after a cautious moment, replied:
"Blacking boots."
"Oh!" said Meg, a little disconcerted.
"Faither was a dustman. I'd raither be a dustman than anythink. Ye've a cart, and there ye sits, and ye comes down only to clean away the rubbish; and sometimes ye find an elegant teaspoon, and ye may find a ring. Faither once found a gold ring with three red stones in it that shine. There's nothink like being a dustman," said the boy, with an air of one taking a survey of all the learned professions. "I'd be a dustman, but because of that ere leg. To be a dustman you must be hale in all yer limbs, ye must; so a lady comes round and says I'm to be a bootblack. She gives me brushes and a board and a pot of blacking, and I sets to; and I can make boots shine as will make your eyes blink. Now your boots," with a downward glance at Meg's feet, "are uncommon dusty—I'll black 'em for you."
Meg hesitated; but the cripple had already unstrapped the parcel swung on his back, taken from it a brush, a pot of blacking, and a board, and was down on one knee before her.