"And do you mean to say," exclaimed Matilda, wiping her eyes, and speaking with strange energy, "that if you choose to leave off this kind of life, you can't? Why, you'd be happier, Josh, as a labourer with only twelve or fifteen shillings a week, than you are now;—for I never heard so much from your lips as I have to-night."
"Who the devil will employ people without characters?" demanded Josh Pedler. "Do you think that if you tried to get a place even as a scullion in a gentleman's family, you could obtain it? No such a thing. Lord bless your dear heart! them as talks most about the depravity of the lower classes, is always the last to give us a chance."
"Yes:—and yet we wasn't all nat'rally wicked," said Tim the Snammer. "Some on us was made so by circumstances; and that was the case with me."
"How came that about?" asked Josh Pedler, who, being in no humour to sleep, was well disposed for conversation.
"Yes:—how came that about?" inquired Matilda, feeling interested in the present topic.
"You don't mean to say you would like to hear me tell my story, do you?" exclaimed Tim.
"I should, by all means," answered Josh Pedler.
"And I too——Oh! above all things!" cried Matilda: "particularly, if you can show——what you said," she added hesitatingly.
"You mean to say, if I can prove that I didn't become what I am through my own fault?" observed the Snammer. "Well—I think I can prove it. But you shall judge for yourselves. So, here goes."
And, with this free-and-easy kind of preface, the thief commenced his narrative, which we have expurgated of those grammatical solecisms and characteristic redundancies which, if preserved, would only mar the interest and obscure the sense. At the same time, we have kept as nearly to the original mode of delivery as possible.