He glanced at his ragged dirty garments, and as he did so, his countenance wore an expression of disgust.
“I don’t know as I shall go there any more,” he exclaimed with sudden warmth. “It isn’t the cheese for me to do so. I shall only disgust her. Let things take their chance. I can but call when I am better off, if that ever comes to pass.”
He drank the lodging-house coffee—or a decoction of horse-beans would, perhaps, be the better term—and sallied forth. He had no particular place to go to, no business to transact, and was certainly not a pleasure-seeker, but, like the rest of the idlers in the great human hive, he paced the streets and stared about him. In the course of an hour or so, he discerned a face which was not unfamiliar to him. A fashionably dressed lady turned her head as she passed by, and came to a sudden halt. The gipsy was bold enough to walk up to her, as her manner seemed to be encouraging.
“Goodness me, it is you, then, but how strangely altered!” said the lady.
“I hardly know myself, and it’s a wonder you recognised me, Miss Stanbridge,” cried Bill.
“Why what in the name of all that’s wonderful have you been doing with yourself? You look the greatest ragamuffin out,” observed Laura Stanbridge. “Why, my friend, you are down upon your luck.”
“I should just think I was, and no mistake.”
“And Peace—Charles Peace—what became of him?”
“Don’t know. He had seven years, and I haven’t set eyes on him since he came out. He’s left Sheffield.”
“Left Sheffield, eh! And is he in London? I should suppose not, or I must have seen something of him?”