“To tell you the blessed truth, I can’t say the last shilling I handled.”
“Don’t you go a-believing on him,” whispered another lad in my ear, whilst Gander’s head was turned: “he took thirteenpence last night, he did.”
It was perfectly impossible to obtain from this lad any account of his average earnings. The other boys in the gang told me that he made more than any of them. But Gander, who is a thorough street-beggar, and speaks with a peculiar whine, and who, directly you look at him, puts on an expression of deep distress, seemed to have made up his mind, that if he made himself out to be in great want I should most likely relieve him—so he would not budge an inch from his twopence a-day, declaring it to be the maximum of his daily earnings.
“Ah,” he continued, with a persecuted tone of voice, “if I had only got a little money, I’d be a bright youth! The first chance as I get of earning a few halfpence, I’ll buy myself a coat, and be off to the country, and I’ll lay something I’d soon be a gentleman then, and come home with a couple of pounds in my pocket, instead of never having ne’er a farthing, as now.”
One of the other lads here exclaimed, “Don’t go on like that there, Goose; you’re making us out all liars to the gentleman.”
The old woman also interfered. She lost all patience with Gander, and reproached him for making a false return of his income. She tried to shame him into truthfulness, by saying,—
“Look at my Johnny—my grandson, sir, he’s not a quarther the Goose’s size, and yet he’ll bring me home his shilling, or perhaps eighteenpence or two shillings—for shame on you, Gander! Now, did you make six shillings last week?—now, speak God’s truth!”
“What! six shillings?” cried the Goose—“six shillings!” and he began to look up at the ceiling, and shake his hands. “Why, I never heard of sich a sum. I did once see a half-crown; but I don’t know as I ever touched e’er a one.”
“Thin,” added the old woman, indignantly, “it’s because you’re idle, Gander, and you don’t study when you’re on the crossing; but lets the gintlefolk go by without ever a word. That’s what it is, sir.”
The Goose seemed to feel the truth of this reproach, for he said with a sigh, “I knows I am fickle-minded.”