I started, bewildered by their jargon. My companion looked up at them smiling and drumming out a tune on his knee.
“Stow it,” said the smaller man to the other; “I’ve tried the griffin and it don’t take.” Then he bent his body and whined in a fulsome voice: “Overtaken with a drop, good gentlemen? And won’t you pay a trifle for your lodgings, now?”
I was about to rise, but a gesture on the part of both fellows showed me that they intended to keep us at our disadvantage. A blowzed and noisome woman was advancing to join the group.
“Be alert,” whispered my companion. “We must get out of this.”
The words were for me, but the men gathered their import and assumed a threatening manner. No doubt, seeing but a boy and a cripple, they valued us beneath our muscular worth.
“Come,” said the big man, “we don’t stand on ceremony; we want the price of a drink.”
He advanced upon us, as he spoke, with an ugly look and in a moment my companion had seized him by the ankles and whirled him over against his friend, so that the two crashed down together. The woman set up a screech, as we jumped to our feet, and we saw wild heads start up here and there like snakes from the grass. But before any one could follow us we had gained the rent in the hoarding and slipped through. Glancing back, after I had made my exit, I saw one of the men strike the woman full in the face and fell her to the ground. It was his gentle corrective to her for not having stopped us, and the sight made my blood so boil that I was on the point of tearing back, had not my companion seized and fairly carried me off. As in many cripples, his strength of arm was prodigious.
“Now,” he said, when he had quieted me, “we’ll go home to breakfast.”
“Where?” said I.
“Home, my friend. Oh, I have one, you know, for all my sleeping out there. That was a test for experience; my first one of the kind, but valuable in its way.”