Here he strolled about, now stopping to listen to the song of the labourers as they tramped round the wheels that lifted the goods from the vessels alongside the quay; then he wandered to the sugar-houses, and watched the coopers within mending the broken casks; and stood some time at the door, placing his foot stealthily on the sticky floor, coated, as with tar, with the drainings of the casks. Hence he sauntered to the bridges, and there he loved to stand while the iron viaduct was swung back with him and the other loiterers upon it, to make way for some huge emigrant ship, that presently glided through, with its decks littered with ropes and packages, and the passengers grouped at the stern, nodding and waving their handkerchiefs to their friends down upon the quay. Thus Jobby passed the time till the hour came for all to leave; and then, following the stream of labourers, he reached the gates, and there, having watched the workmen pass one by one, in a long file, through the narrow doorway, while the officers hastily searched each as he went past, the youth turned out into the streets once more, ignorant where he was, or which way to go to reach his home.
Now, too, the excitement being over, the youth began for the first time to feel how tired and hungry he was, and to think of the distance he had travelled. It was impossible for him to remember the road by which he had come, so he asked a boy to direct him back to the Strand. The London lad, seeing that Jobby was fresh from the country, made up his mind to have a bit of fun with him, and directed him down some of the many courts and alleys which abound in that locality, and which generally end in “no thoroughfare.”
The unsuspecting Jobby went on his way as he was bid; and when he found, on coming to the end of the last court, that a trick had been played upon him, weary and famishing as he was, the poor lad could not help seating himself on the door-step of the nearest house, and bursting into a flood of tears.
Here the wretched youth was soon espied by one of the female inmates, who, seeing that he was well dressed, invited him in, and drew from him, without much difficulty, the whole story of his troubles. She offered him some ale, telling him that a draught of it would be sure to refresh him, and help him on his journey. The simple lad thankfully received a mug of the drink, but had scarcely swallowed it, before his chin fell with a sudden drowsiness upon his bosom; and though he started up and tried to shake the sleepiness off, it was too much for him; and in a few minutes he was dead asleep in the chair.
Jobby could remember no further, save that, on waking, he found himself in a wretched, damp, dirty room, lying on the sacking of a bare bedstead, and on looking for his clothes, he discovered that they had been stolen, and the ragged ones he now wore left in their place. He was too frightened to recollect how he had got away from the house, or found his way out of the courts. All he knew was, that on reaching the open street, he had placed himself under the protection of the first policeman he could meet, who returned with the boy to see if he could find out the house again, but in vain. The many windings and turnings of the courts so confused the country lad, that it was impossible for him to recall the way he had gone. After this, the policeman had taken him to the station, where the superintendent had given orders to one of the men to accompany him home.
Mrs. Sandboys was too glad to have her darling boy with her once again to feel inclined either to grieve or scold overmuch about his adventures; besides, she now knew the luggage would arrive in a few hours, and then he and the rest of the family could be made clean and sweet, which, she began to think, they were far from being at that present moment.
Mr. Sandboys, too, was not so much annoyed at the occurrence as might have been expected. Not only was he delighted at the boy’s return, but he felt a kind of inward satisfaction to find that his long-cherished theory as to the wickedness of the great Metropolis was being, in all its particulars, so fully borne out. He had foreseen, he said, every occurrence that had happened, but they had only themselves to blame. He had fully warned them of all they had to undergo; and, in his opinion—if he knew anything at all about the rogueries of London—they had not yet gone through one tithe of the troubles that were in store for them.
Cursty’s sermonizing was at last cut short by the arrival of the long looked-for luggage. Then Mrs. Sandboys was in her glory. If ladies delight in the synthetical operation of packing, they certainly find an equal delight in the analytical process of unpacking—even as children take pleasure in building up their card-houses, and a like pleasure in blowing them down again.
It was not long before Mrs. Sandboys, with Elcy at her elbow, was down on her knees in the kitchen, in front of a long open box, counting the several articles enumerated on a piece of paper gummed to the lid, to satisfy herself that none had been abstracted during their absence. And as she examined the state of her best caps and bonnets, she found them so tumbled, that she felt thoroughly convinced they had been worn by some parties—the wives of the railway men, she had no doubt—or why, as she said, should they have kept them so long on the way?