Almsgiving was impossible to Micky just then, for he had spent all his money (his last two cocoanut shies had been paid for by Kitty), but he was quite willing to help with advice.
‘And there’s a girl selling delicious toffee, only she calls it candy,’ said Kitty. ‘Why does she call it candy, Emmeline?’
‘I shouldn’t think of giving a starving boy ice-cream, or toffee either,’ said Emmeline. ‘We’ll go where there’s something more sensible to eat than what you can buy at this Fair. Come along, children.’
On the whole, the twins were not unwilling to leave the Fair. It was rather sad to go so soon, but less so now that twopence of Kitty’s represented all their remaining fortune than it would have been half an hour before, and when even that solitary twopence had been spent on the mysterious toffee that called itself ‘candy,’ their willingness to forsake the Fair became eagerness to see what new thing was about to happen. It was as good as a story-game come true to wander through the streets of Eastwich with this delightfully ragged dirty boy.
‘Where are we going, Emmeline? What are we going to do?’ they cried.
‘You’ll see,’ said Emmeline.
As a matter of fact, she did not quite know herself.
They came out of the Fair into a region of squalid little shops; squalid, at least, they appeared to Emmeline, but her protégé saw them from a different point of view.
‘Please, lady, the fried fish and ’taters in there is all right,’ he hinted wistfully, as they passed an overwhelming smell.
Emmeline hesitated. She had vaguely intended taking him to some superior Tea-Rooms in the High Street, where she herself had sometimes gone for a treat, but now she came to think of it, perhaps the fried-fish shop would be more fitting in this case.