“He was a puttin’ of it back,” said Tommy. “I wish he’d been somewheres else! See what he been an’ got by it! If he’d only ha’ let me run, there wouldn’t ha’ been nobody the wiser. I am sorry I didn’t run. Oh, I ham so ’ungry!”
Tommy doubled himself up, with his hands inside the double.
“’Ungry, are you?” roared the baker. “That’s what thieves off a baker’s cart ought to be! They ought to be always ’ungry—’ungry to all eternity, they ought! An’ that’s what’s goin’ to be done to ’em!”
“Look here!” cried a pale-faced man in the front of the crowd, who seemed a mechanic. “There’s a way of tellin’ whether the boy’s speakin’ the truth now!”
He caught up the restored loaf, halved it cleverly, and handed each of the boys a part.
“Now, baker, what’s to pay?” he said, and drew himself up, for the man was too angry at once to reply.
The boys were tearing at the delicious bread, blind and deaf to all about them.
“P’r’aps you would like to give me in charge?” pursued their saviour.
“Sixpence,” said the man sullenly.
The mechanic laid sixpence on the cover of the cart.