"Oh, you? you've got no pluck! Go in and win, Billy!"
This exhortation was shouted out, and it reached Billy's ears.
"There," said Mr. Sly, in a tone of suppressed excitement, and striving hard to smother his resentment at Billy's good-fortune, "d'yer 'ear wot they say? 'Go in and win.' Yer've got eightpenn'orth, make it sixteenpenn'orth or nothink. There was a boy 'ere last week"--and Mr. Sly gazed meditatively before him at the visionary boy he was referring to--"who commenced with a farden, just like you, and he won nine times runnin'. It's nothink much at fust---a farden, a ha'penny, a penny. It's now that it begins to mount up. Yes, nine times running he won--ten shillings and eightpence, that's wot he got the worth of. He went out loaded. Four pound of 'ard-bake, a pound of burnt almonds, a pound of barley-sugar, three pound of peppermint-rock, same of toffee, and I don't know what else. I didn't mind a bit; it did me good. That's the way to make a forchen."
The recital of the catalogue of treasures was too much for Billy, and the marble being insidiously slipped into his palm by the cunning tradesman--who was quite aware that if you go on doubling or nothing it must eventually come to nothing--Billy, with quivering nerves, dropped it down the corkscrew turret.
"Three!" shouted Mr. Sly. "But I might git one or two. 'Ere goes. Seventeen! Nothink."
Billy was sobered. Ruined and chapfallen he preceded Mr. Sly into the shop, and thence emerged into the alley, where he related his misfortune, while Mr. Sly, standing at the door, wiped his heated brows, and called out:
"Never say die, Billy. Better luck next time."
But Billy was not to be consoled. His companions, disgusted with his bad luck and disappointed in their expectations, fell off from him one by one, and he was left quite alone. A few minutes ago he was a personage, now he was nobody. He felt the fall.
[CHAPTER XII.]
Timothy Chance went from Mr. Loveday's shop with the warm new-laid egg in his hand. By permission of the bookseller he left his one possession, the fowl rescued from the burning schoolhouse, behind him, Mr. Loveday saying, jocosely,