‘Yes, and a loaf of bread.’
‘Oh yes! and a little warm clothing for the wife and child in the corner. That’s a bright little fellow,’ said he, pointing to Joe; ‘is that your eldest?’
‘No, sir, he ain’t one of ours,’ said the woman. ‘We keep him out of charity. His mother is dead.’
‘Dear me!’ said the Vicar; ‘who would have thought it? What true benevolence! How it does shame us who are better off! How beautiful it is to see the poor so ready to help one another!’
‘Ah! it is little we can do, but we allus tries to do our duty,’ said Carroty Bill, with the look of a saint and the courage of a martyr, while the forlorn woman seemed the picture of resignation and despair.
‘I am sure we might leave a little money here as well,’ said the Vicar.
‘Oh, certainly,’ said both the curates who declared they had never seen more unmitigated poverty anywhere.
And then they went off.
And thus relieved with a little ready cash and food, and cheered with the prospect of blankets and coals and clothes, for which tickets had been left, Carroty Bill was enabled at leisure to rejoice over the effects of his artful dodge, which was told to a crowd of applauding vagabonds, as rascally as himself; while the landlord of the public, already referred to, could not find too much to say on behalf of that Christian charity by which he expected to benefit more than anyone else in that dingy and poverty-stricken locality. The Vicar was quite justified so far as appearances went. It was an unhealthy habitation which he visited, and all the inmates looked sad and ill.
As the Vicar left the apartment of Carroty Bill he knocked at the next door, inhabited by a hard-working shoemaker of freethought tendencies, who hated him and all his ways. The Vicar beat a hasty retreat, as he knew the sharpness of the shoemaker’s tongue.