“You will do it?” said Bealby.
“Do I look a swindle?” cried the tramp, and suddenly a lump of the abundant hair fell over one eye in a singularly threatening manner. Bealby handed over the sixpence without further discussion. “I’ll treat you fairly, you see,” said the tramp, after he had spat on and pocketed the sixpence, and he did as much. He decided that the soup was ready to be served and he served it with care. Bealby began at once. “There’s a nextry onion,” said the tramp, throwing one over. “It didn’t cost me much and I gives it you for nothin’. That’s all right, eh? Here’s ’ealth!”
Bealby consumed his soup and bread meekly with one eye upon his host. He would, he decided, eat all he could and then sit a little while, and then get this tramp to tell him the way to—anywhere else. And the tramp wiped soup out of his can with gobbets of bread very earnestly and meditated sagely on Bealby.
“You better pal in with me, matey, for a bit,” he said at last. “You can’t go nowhere else—not to-night.”
“Couldn’t I walk perhaps to a town or sumpthing?”
“These woods ain’t safe.”
“’Ow d’you mean?”
“Ever ’eard tell of a gurrillia?—sort of big black monkey thing.”
“Yes,” said Bealby faintly.
“There’s been one loose abart ’ere—oh week or more. Fact. And if you wasn’t a grown up man quite and going along in the dark, well—’e might say something to you.... Of course ’e wouldn’t do nothing where there was a fire or a man—but a little chap like you. I wouldn’t like to let you do it, ’strewth I wouldn’t. It’s risky. Course I don’t want to keep you. There it is. You go if you like. But I’d rather you didn’t. ’Onest.”