“At the chandly-shop,” answered the Goose.
The “King” of the Tumbling-Boy Crossing-Sweepers.
The young sweeper who had been styled by his companions the “King” was a pretty-looking boy, only tall enough to rest his chin comfortably on the mantel-piece as he talked to me, and with a pair of grey eyes that were as bright and clear as drops of sea-water. He was clad in a style in no way agreeing with his royal title; for he had on a kind of dirt-coloured shooting-coat of tweed, which was fraying into a kind of cobweb at the edges and elbows. His trousers too, were rather faulty, for there was a pink-wrinkled dot of flesh at one of the knees; while their length was too great for his majesty’s short legs, so that they had to be rolled up at the end like a washerwoman’s sleeves.
His royal highness was of a restless disposition, and, whilst talking, lifted up, one after another, the different ornaments on the mantel-piece, frowning and looking at them sideways, as he pondered over the replies he should make to my questions.
When I arrived at the grandmother’s apartment the “king” was absent, his majesty having been sent with a pitcher to fetch some spring-water.
The “king” also was kind enough to favour me with samples of his wondrous tumbling powers. He could bend his little legs round till they curved like the long German sausages we see in the ham-and-beef shops; and when he turned head over heels, he curled up his tiny body as closely as a wood-louse, and then rolled along, wabbling like an egg.
“The boys call me Johnny,” he said; “and I’m getting on for eleven, and I goes along with the Goose and Harry, a-sweeping at St. Martin’s Church, and about there. I used, too, to go to the crossing where the statute is, sir, at the bottom of the Haymarket. I went along with the others; sometimes there were three or four of us, or sometimes one, sir. I never used to sweep unless it was wet. I don’t go out not before twelve or one in the day; it ain’t no use going before that; and beside, I couldn’t get up before that, I’m too sleepy. I don’t stop out so late as the other boys; they sometimes stop all night, but I don’t like that. The Goose was out all night along with Martin; they went all along up Piccirilly, and there they climbed over the Park railings and went a birding all by themselves, and then they went to sleep for an hour on the grass—so they says. I likes better to come home to my bed. It kills me for the next day when I do stop out all night. The Goose is always out all night; he likes it.
“Neither father nor mother’s alive, sir, but I lives along with grandmother and aunt, as owns this room, and I always gives them all I gets.
“Sometimes I makes a shilling, sometimes sixpence, and sometimes less. I can never take nothink of a day, only of a night, because I can’t tumble of a day, and I can of a night.
“The Gander taught me tumbling, and he was the first as did it along the crossings. I can tumble quite as well as the Goose; I can turn a caten-wheel, and he can’t, and I can go further on forards than him, but I can’t tumble backards as he can. I can’t do a handspring, though. Why, a handspring’s pitching yourself forards on both hands, turning over in front, and lighting on your feet; that’s very difficult, and very few can do it. There’s one little chap, but he’s very clever, and can tie himself up in a knot a’most. I’m best at caten-wheels; I can do ’em twelve or fourteen times running—keep on at it. It just does tire you, that’s all. When I gets up I feels quite giddy. I can tumble about forty times over head and heels. I does the most of that, and I thinks it’s the most difficult, but I can’t say which gentlemen likes best. You see they are anigh sick of the head-and-heels tumbling, and then werry few of the boys can do caten-wheels on the crossings—only two or three besides me.