“Yes,” Frank said, “I'm just up from the country. I thought it would be easy to get a place in London, but I don't find it so.”
“A place!” the boy repeated scornfully. “I should like any one to see me in a place. It's better a hundred times to be your own master.”
“Even if you do want a piece of bread sometimes?” Frank put in.
“Yes,” the boy said. “When it ain't market day and ye haven't saved enough to buy a few papers or boxes of matches it does come hard. In winter the times is bad, but in summer we gets on fairish, and there ain't nothing to grumble about. Are you out of work yourself?”
“Yes,” Frank answered, “I'm on the lookout for a job.”
“You'd have a chance here in the morning,” said the boy, looking at him. “You look decent, and might get a job unloading. They won't have us at no price, if they can help it.”
“I will come and try anyhow,” Frank said.
That evening Frank told his friend, the porter, that he thought of going out early next morning to try and pick up odd jobs at Covent Garden.
“Don't you think of it,” the porter said. “There's nothing worse for a lad than taking to odd jobs. It gets him into bad ways and bad company. Don't you hurry. I have spoken to lots of my mates, and they're all on the lookout for you. We on the platform can't do much. It ain't in our line, you see; but in the goods department, where they are constant with vans and wagons and such like, they are likely enough to hear of something before long.”
That night, thinking matters over in bed, Frank determined to go down to the docks and see if he could get a place as cabin boy. He had had this idea in his mind ever since he lost his money, and had only put it aside in order that he might, if possible, get some berth on shore which might seem likely in the end to afford him a means of making his way up again. It was not that he was afraid of the roughness of a cabin boy's life; it was only because he knew that it would be so very long before, working his way up from boy to able bodied seaman, he could obtain a mate's certificate, and so make a first step up the ladder. However, he thought that even this would be better than going as a wagoner's boy, and he accordingly crossed London Bridge, turned down Eastcheap, and presently found himself in Ratcliff Highway. He was amused here at the nautical character of the shops, and presently found himself staring into a window full of foreign birds, for the most part alive in cages, among which, however, were a few cases of stuffed birds.