“I don’t know so much about that. We’ve done pretty well together at one time—why not now?”
“Oh! I’m well enough to play second fiddle, but aint of no manner of use when left to myself. So you’ve given up Sheffield and the other towns—have you? Got too hot, I suppose.”
“It’s not altogether that. I could do well enough in my old quarters, but a change was absolutely necessary.”
“I see—a change of air for the benefit of your health.”
“Look here, nobody knows me as Charles Peace in Peckham, and so you’d better not mention Sheffield, Manchester, or Bradford, ’cause, you see, if you do, it might get wind, and, if it did, I should be ‘copped’ as sure as eggs is eggs.”
“Oh, you’ve nothing to fear from me.”
“I know that, old boy—I’d trust you with my life, and that’s saying something, seeing how few there are a bloke can trust now-a-days. Men are getting more like wild beasts than human beings. As to the people in this world getting wiser or better it’s all my eye and Betty Martin.”
“That’s right enough, they are not near so good I think as they were when I first came into this world,” remarked the gipsy. “Look at old Gallipot. He poisoned his first wife, and no doubt intended to polish off his second by the same means.”
“He left behind him an excellent fiddle, that’s one thing in his favour, seeing that I bought it for a mere song.”
“Was that his fiddle you were playing on to-day?”