“Bill, cummere. Larst night there were a byeby come to be your sister if she’d grow’d. But she didn’t live more’n hour. An’ that’s why your awnt’s ’ere, an’ mind yer do whort she tells yer, an’ don’t go inter the other room, an’ don’t do nothin’ ’cep’ whort yer told, or I’ll break yer ’ead for yer, sure’s death, I will!”
Then Bill’s father had gone away to his work, being unable to afford the loss of a day; and Bill’s vehement, red-haired aunt had come into the kitchen, and shaken him, and abused him, and given him some breakfast. Bill’s aunt was one of those unfortunate people who cannot love one person without hating three others to make up for it. Just at present she was loving Bill’s mother, her sister, very much, and retained her self-respect by being very strict with Bill’s father, with Bill himself, and with the doctor. She instructed Bill that he was not to go to school that morning. He was to remain absolutely quiet in the kitchen, because he might be wanted to run errands and do odd jobs. For some time Bill had obeyed her, and then monotony tempted him to include the little yard at the back in his definition of the kitchen. All the basement flats in Pond Buildings have little yards at the back. Most of the inhabitants use them as drying-grounds. In some of them there is a dead shrub or the remains of a sanguine geranium that failed; in all of them there are cinders and very old meat-tins. Now, when Bill went out into the yard, he found the black cat, which he called Simon Peter, asleep in the sun on the wall. Simon Peter did not belong to any one; she roamed about at the back of Pond Buildings, dodged anything that was thrown at her, and ate unspeakable things. She had formed a melancholy and unremunerative attachment to Bill; her name had been suggested to him by stray visits to a Sunday-school, forced on him during a short season when his father, to use his own phrase, had got religion. “Siming Peter,” said Bill, as he scratched her gently under the ear, “Siming Peter, my cat, come in ’ere along o’ me and ’ave some milk.”
It is not at all probable that Simon Peter was deceived by this. She must have known that, with the best intentions in the world, Bill could not do so much as this for her. Yet she blinked at him with her lazy green eyes, and followed him from the yard into the kitchen. Bill filled a saucer with water, and put it down on the ground before her. “There yer are, Siming Peter,” he said; “an’ that’s better for yer nor any milk.” Simon Peter put up her back slowly, mewed contemptuously, and trotted out into the yard again. Bill, dashing after her, trod on the saucer and broke it, and overturned a chair. In another moment he was in the clutches of his fierce aunt.
“Do you want to kill your blessed mother, you devil? Didn’t I tell yer to sit quoite? An’ a good saucer broke, with the poor dead corpse of your byeby sister lyin’ in the next room. Go hout! You’re more nuisance nor you’re wuth. See ’ere. Don’t you show your ugly ’ead ’ere agin afore night. An’ when yer comes back I’ll tell your father of yer, an’ ’e ’ll skin yer alive. Dinner? Not for such as you. Hout yer git.”
So Bill had been turned out, and now sat with his feet in a delightful puddle, reflecting for a minute or two on dead babies, injustice, puddles, and other things. It was a larger puddle, as far as Bill could see, than any other in the street, and it was this which made it so charming. But a puddle is of no use to any one who has not got something to float on it. If you have something to float on it you can imagine boats, and races, and storms, and it becomes a magnificent playground for the imagination; otherwise the biggest puddle is simply a puddle, and it is nothing more. So Bill started down the street to look for something which would float, a scrap of paper or a straw. He was stopped by a lanky unkempt girl with yellow hair, who was leaning on a broom that was almost bald, outside an open door. She was four or five years older than Bill, and she was very fond of him. The girls of the wretched neighbourhood for the most part rather petted Bill; they did so, without knowing their reason, because he was quaint, and pretty, and little. He was rather dirty it was true, but then so were they; and for the most part they were not so pretty.
“Bill,” said the yellow-haired girl, “why awnt yer at school? You’ll ketch it, Bill.”
“No, I ’ont. They kep’ me, ’cos we’ve got a byeby, an’ the byeby’s dead. Then they tunned me out for breakin’ a saucer when I was goin’ after Siming Peter what I were feedin’, an’ I ain’t to ’ave no dinner, and I ain’t to come back afore night, and when I do come back I’m goin’ to be walloped. I wish I was dead!”
“Oh, Bill, you are a bad boy; what are yer goin’ to do?”
“Play ships at that puddle. I was lookin’ for sutthin’ what ’ud do for ships, an’ can’t find nothin’.”
“An’ what’ll yer do about dinner?”