“Washing,” said Bealby guessing wildly.
The tramp shook his head. “Making a foam,” he corrected. “That’s what I has my fits with. See? I shoves a bit in my mouth and down I goes and I rolls about. Making a sort of moaning sound. Why, I been given brandy often—neat brandy.... It isn’t always a cert—nothing’s absolutely a cert. I’ve ’ad some let-downs.... Once I was bit by a nasty little dog—that brought me to pretty quick—and once I ’ad an old gentleman go through my pockets. ‘Poor chap!’ ’e ses, ‘very likely ’e’s destitoot, let’s see if ’e’s got anything.’... I’d got all sorts of things, I didn’t want ’im prying about. But I didn’t come to sharp enough to stop ’im. Got me into trouble that did....
“It’s an old lay,” said the tramp, “but it’s astonishing ’ow it’ll go in a quiet village. Sort of amuses ’em. Or dropping suddenly in front of a bicycle party. Lot of them old tricks are the best tricks, and there ain’t many of ’em Billy Bridget don’t know. That’s where you’re lucky to ’ave met me, matey. Billy Bridget’s a ’ard man to starve. And I know the ropes. I know what you can do and what you can’t do. And I got a feeling for a policeman—same as some people ’ave for cats. I’d know if one was ’idden in the room....”
He expanded into anecdotes and the story of various encounters in which he shone. It was amusing and it took Bealby on his weak side. Wasn’t he the Champion Dodger of the Chelsome playground?
The tide of talk ebbed. “Well,” said the tramp, “time we was up and doing....”
They went along shady lanes and across an open park and they skirted a breezy common from which they could see the sea. And among other things that the tramp said was this, “Time we began to forage a bit.”
He turned his large observant nose to the right of him and the left.
§ 5
Throughout the afternoon the tramp discoursed upon the rights and wrongs of property, in a way that Bealby found very novel and unsettling. The tramp seemed to have his ideas about owning and stealing arranged quite differently from those of Bealby. Never before had Bealby thought it possible to have them arranged in any other than the way he knew. But the tramp contrived to make most possession seem unrighteous and honesty a code devised by those who have for those who haven’t. “They’ve just got ’old of it,” he said. “They want to keep it to themselves.... Do I look as though I’d stole much of anybody’s? It isn’t me got ’old of this land and sticking up my notice boards to keep everybody off. It isn’t me spends my days and nights scheming ’ow I can get ’old of more and more of the stuff....
“I don’t envy it ’em,” said the tramp. “Some ’as one taste and some another. But when it comes to making all this fuss because a chap who isn’t a schemer ’elps ’imself to a mäthful,—well, it’s Rot....