She went out, taking her awful secret with her, and turning over I fell asleep again on my pile of straw. "If ever I have a dollar I'll give it to her so she may stop walkin'," was my last conscious thought.
My next awakening was a very different one, for the light was streaming into the market, and a cheerful red face was shining down, like a rising sun, over a wheelbarrow of vegetables.
"Don't you think it's about time all honest folk were out of bed, sonny?" enquired a voice.
"I ain't been here mo'n an hour," I retorted, resenting the imputation of slothfulness with a spirit that was not unworthy of my mother.
The open length of the market, I saw now, was beginning to present a busy, almost a festive, air. Stalls were already laden with fruit and vegetables, and farmers' wagons covered with canvas, and driven by sunburnt countrymen, had drawn up to the sidewalk. Rising hurriedly to my feet, I began rubbing my eyes, for I had been dreaming of the fragrance of bacon in our little kitchen.
"Now I'd be up an' off to home, if I were you, sonny," observed the marketman, planting his wheelbarrow of vegetables on the brick floor, and beginning to wipe off the stall. "The sooner you take yo' whippin', the sooner you'll set easy again."
"There ain't anybody to whip me," I replied dolefully, staring at the sign over his head, on which was painted in large letters—"John Chitling. Fish, Oysters (in season). Vegetables. Fruits."
Stopping midway in his preparations, he turned on me his great beaming face, so like the rising sun that looked over his shoulder, while I watched his big jean apron swell with the panting breaths that drew from his stomach.
"Here's a boy that says he ain't got nobody to whip him!" he exclaimed to his neighbours in the surrounding stalls,—a poultryman, covered with feathers, a fish vender, bearing a string of mackerel in either hand, and a butcher, with his sleeves rolled up and a blood-stained apron about his waist.
"I al'ays knew you were thick-headed, John Chitling," remarked the fish dealer, with contempt, "but I never believed you were such a plum fool as not to know a tramp when you seed him."