I began to cry, not because my Grandmother had disinherited me, but because this common horse-lout called me a "castaway," and because I knew myself to be one.
"Don't fret," the groom continued; "there'll be greet enough for thee when thou'rt older; for thou'lt have a hard time on't, or my name's not Dick Snaffle."
We had a long way to reach the Wagon, which started from a Tavern called the "Pillars of Hercules," right on the other side of Hyde Park. I was desperately tired when we came thither, and craved leave to sit on a bench before the door, between the Sign-post and the Horse-trough. So low was I fallen. A beggar came alongside of me, and as I dozed tried to pick my pocket. There was nothing in it—not even a crust; and he hit me a savage blow over the mouth because I had nothing to be robbed of. Anon comes Dick Snaffle, who, telling me that the Saddler of Bawtry was hanged for leaving his liquor, and that he had no mind for a halter while good ale was to be drunk, had been comforting himself within the tavern; and he finding me all blubbered with grief at the blow I had gotten from the beggar, fetches him a sound kick; and so the two fell to fighting, till out comes the tapster, raving at Tom Ostler to duck the cutpurse cadger in the Horse-trough. There was much more sport out of doors in my young days than now.
At last the Wagon, for which we had another good hour to wait, came lumbering up to the Pillars of Hercules; and after the Wagoner had fought with a Grenadier, who wanted to go to Brentford for fourpence, and would have stabbed the man with his bayonet had not his hand been stayed, the Groom took me up, and put me on the straw inside. He paid the Wagoner some money for me, and also gave into his keeping a little bundle, containing, I suppose, some change of raiment for me, saying that more would be sent after me when needed; and so, handing him too a letter, he bade me Godd'en, and went on his way with the Grenadier, a Sweep, and a Gipsy woman, who was importunate that he should cross her hand with silver, in order that he might know all about the great Fortune that he was to wed, as Tom Philbrick did in the ballad. And this was the way in which the Servants of the Quality spent their forenoons when I was young.
As the great rumbling chariot creaked away westward, there came across my child-heart a kind of consciousness that I had been Wronged, and Cheated out of my inheritance. Why was I all clad in laces and velvet but yesterday, and to-day apparelled like a tramping pedlar's foster-brat? Why was I, who was used to ride in coaches, and on ponyback, and on the shoulder of my own body-servant, and was called "Little Master," and made much of, to be carted away in a vile dray like this? But what is a child of eight years old to do? and how is he to make head against those who are older and wickeder than he? I knew nothing about lawyers, or wills, or the Rogueries of domestics. I only knew that I had been foully and shamefully Abused since my dear Grandparent's death; and in that wagon, I think, as I lay tumbling and sobbing on that straw, were first planted in me those seeds of a Wild, and sometimes Savage, disposition that have not made my name to be called "Dangerous" in vain.
We were a small and not a very merry company under the wagon tilt. There was a Tinker, with all his accoutrements of pots and kettles about him, who was lazy, as most Tinkers are when not at hard work, and lay on his back chewing straw, and cursing me fiercely whenever I moved. There was a Welsh gentleman, very ragged and dirty, with a wife raggeder and dirtier than he. He was addressed as Captain, and was bound, he said, for Bristol, to raise soldiers for the King's Service. He beat his wife now and then, before we came to Hounslow. There was the tinker's dog, a great terror to me; for although he feigned to sleep, and to snore as much as a Dog can snore, he always kept one little red eye fixed upon me, and gave a growl and made a Snap whenever I turned on the straw. There was the Wagoner's child that was sickly, and continually cried for its mammy; and lastly there was a buxom servant-maid, with a little straw hat and cherry ribbons over a Luton lace mob, and a pretty flowered gown pulled through the placket-holes, and a quilted petticoat, and silver buckles in her shoes, and black mits, who was going home to see her Grandmother at Stoke Pogis,—so she told me, and made me bitterly remember that I had now no Grandmother,—and was as clean and bright and smiling as a new pin, or the milkmaids on May morning dancing round the brave Garlands that they have gotten from the silversmiths in Cranbourn Alley. She sat prettily crouched up on her box in a corner; and so, with the Tinker among his pots and kettles, the Welsh Captain and his lady on sundry bundles of rags, the sickly child in a basket, the Tinker's dog curled up in his Master's hat, I tossing on the straw, and a great rout of crates of crockery, rolls of cloth, tea and sugar, and other London merchandize, which the wagoner was taking down West, as a return cargo for the eggs, poultry, butcher's meat, and green stuff that he had brought up, made altogether such a higgledypiggledy that you do not often see in these days, when Servant-maids come up by Coach—my service to them!—and disdain the Wagon, and his Worship the Captain wears a fine laced coat and a cockade in his hat,—who but he!—and travels post.
The maid who was bound on a visit to her Grandmother was, I rejoice to admit, most tenderly kind to me. She combed my hair, and wiped away the tears that besmirched my face. When the Wagon halted at the King's Arms, Kensington, she tripped down and brought me a flagon of new milk with some peppermint in it; and she told me stories all the way to Hounslow, and bade me mind my book, and be a good child, and that Angels would love me. Likewise that she was being courted by a Pewterer in Panyer Alley, who had parted a bright sixpence with her—she showed me her token, drawn from her modest bodice, and who had passed his word to Wed, if he had to take to the Road for the price of the Ring—but that was only his funning, she said,—or if she were forced even to run away from her Mistress, and make a Fleet Match of it. It was little, in good sooth, that I knew about courtships or Love-tokens or Fleet Matches; but I believe that a woman, for want of a better gossip, would open her Love-budget to a Baby or a Blind Puppy, and I listened so well that she kissed me ere we parted, and gave me a pocketful of cheese-cakes.
It was quite night, and far beyond Hounslow, when I was dozing off into happy sleep again, that the Wagon came to a dead stop, and I awoke in great fright at the sound of a harsh voice asking if the Boy Jack was there. I was the "Boy Jack:" and the Wagoner, coming to the after-part of the tilt with his lantern, pulled me from among the straw with far less ado than if I had been the Tinker's dog.
I was set down on the ground before a tall man with a long face and an ugly little scratch wig, who had large boots with straps over his thighs like a Farmer, and swayed about him with a long whip.
"Oh, this is the boy, is it?" said the long man. "A rare lump to lick into shape, upon my word."