The woman turned sharply to the little girl.
“Come here, child,” she said. “Have I not told you to keep away from that horrid boy?”
Without paying the least attention to the woman, the little girl touched the hand of the boy with a kind of odd confidentialness.
“I yike oo velly much,” she said.
“We shall not detain you, my lady,” said the bald-headed man, bestowing a studious attention upon his diction. “But I’m afraid we must trouble you to come to see the magistrate to-morrow morning at eleven. The accused will be detained in custody. He has all the appearance of being an old hand. By to-morrow we shall hope to have found out a bit more about him.”
“Why don’t you give me my purse?” said the woman. “I can’t live without it.”
“Was a purse found on the accused, Moxon?” said the bald-headed man to the stouter of the two original constables.
“No, sir,” said Moxon, “on’y fourpence in copper and a foreign book.”
“Hand them to me,” said the bald-headed man peremptorily, “and go over him properly.”
The boy was taken by two policemen into a room close by. Immediately they began to pull off his clothes. To his extreme horror, bewilderment and shame they stripped him stark naked. They lifted up his heels and passed their fingers between his toes; they held up his arms and pressed their hands into his armpits; they ran their fingers through his hair, and placed them in his mouth.