“Who are you, my boy, and where do you come from?”
“He's one of Betty Cobbe's chickens!” shouted out an old savage-faced beggar-man, who was terribly indignant at the great misdirection of public sympathy; “and a nice clutch they are!”
“What is it to you, Dan, where the crayture gets his bread?” rejoined an old newsvender, who, in all likelihood, had once been a parlor boarder in the same seminary.
“Never mind them, but answer me, my lad!” said the gentleman. “If you are willing to take service, and can find any one to recommend you—”
“Sure, we'll all go bail for him—to any amount!” shouted out the little crippled fellow, from his “bowl;” and certainly a most joyous burst of laughter ran through the crowd at the sentiment.
“Maybe ye think I'm not a householder,” rejoined the fellow, with a grin of assumed anger; “but have n't I my own sugar hogshead to live in, and devil receave the lodger in the same premises!”
“I see there 's no chance of our being able to settle anything here,” said the gentleman. “These good people think the matter more their own than ours; so meet to-morrow, my lad, at Dycer's, at twelve o'clock, and bring me anything that can speak for your character.” As he said these few words he brushed the crowd to one side with his whip, and forcing his way, with the air of a man who would not be denied, left the place.
“And he 's laving the crayture without givin' him a farden!” cried one of the mob, who suddenly saw all the glorious fabric of a carouse and a drunken bout disappear like a mirage.
“Oh, the 'tarnal vagabond” shouted another, more indignantly; “to desart the child that a-way,—and he that won the race for him!”
“Will yez see the little crayture wronged?” said another, who appeared by his pretentious manner to be a practised street orator. “Will yez lave the dissolute orphan—” he meant “desolate”—“to be chayted out of his pater money? Are yez men at all? or are yez dirty slaves of the bloody 'stokessy that's murderin' ould Ireland'?”