“I’m with you,” replied his friend; “unless it’s cold enough to work the shaller; that’s the best game. ’Taint no use, though, without its perishin’ cold; that’s the wust on it.”
(It may be here mentioned that the “shaller,” or more properly “shallow” dodge, is for a beggar to make capital of his rags and a disgusting condition of semi-nudity; to expose his shoulders and his knees and his shirtless chest, pinched and blue with cold. A pouncing of the exposed parts with common powder-blue is found to heighten the frost-bitten effect, and to excite the compassion of the charitable.)
“There you are wrong,” broke in the advocate of “cheek;” “that isn’t the wust of it. The wust of it is, that there’s no best of it. It don’t matter what you try; all games is a-growing stale as last week’s tommy” (bread).
“It’s ’cos people get so gallus ’ard-’arted, that’s wot it is,” remarked with a grin a young gentleman who shared the bed of the ‘cheeky’ one.
“No, that ain’t it, either; people are as soft-’arted and as green as ever they was; and so they would shell-out like they used to do, only for them —” (something too dreadful for printing) “lurchers of the S’ciety. It’s all them. It ain’t the reg’lar p’lice. They’re above beggars, ’cept when they’re set on. It’s them Mendikent coves, wot gets their livin’ by pokin’ and pryin’ arter every cove like us whenever they sees him in the street. They gives the public the ‘office’” (information), “and the public believes ’em, bust ’em!”
These observations evidently set the “cheeky” one thinking on times past; for he presently took up the subject again.
“Things ain’t wot they was one time. Talkin’ about the shallow lay; Lor’ bless yer, you should have knowed what it was no longer ago than when I was a kid, and used to go out with my old woman. Ah, it was summat to have winter then! I’ve heerd my old woman say often that she’d warrant to make enough to live on all the rest of the year, if she only had three months’ good stiff frost. I recollect the time when you couldn’t go a dozen yards without hearing the flying up of a window or the opening of a door, and there was somebody a-beckoning of you to give you grub or coppers. It was the grub that beat us.”
“How d’ye mean? Didn’t you get enough of it?”
“Hark at him! enough of it! We got a thunderin’ sight too much of it. A little of it was all very well, ’specially if it was a handy-sized meaty bone, wot you could relish with a pint of beer when you felt peckish; but, bust ’em, they used to overdo it. It don’t look well, don’t you know, to carry a bag or anythink, when you are on the shallow lay. It looks as though you was a ‘reg’lar,’ and that don’t ‘act.’ The old gal used to stow a whacking lot in a big pocket she had in her petticut, and I used to put away a ‘dollop’ in the busum of my shirt, which it was tied round the waist-bag hid underneath my trousers for the purpose. But, Lor’ bless yer, sometimes the blessed trade would go that aggravatin’ that we would both find ourselves loaded-up in no time. Lor, how my old woman would swear about the grub sometimes! It used to make me larf; it was a reg’lar pantermime. She’d be reg’lar weighed down, and me stuffed so jolly full that I daren’t so much as shiver even, lest a lump of tommy or meat should tumble out in front, and all the while we’d be pattering about us not having eat a mouthful since the day afore yesterday. Then somebody ’ud beckon us; and p’r’aps it was a servant-gal, with enough in a dish for a man and his dawg. And the old woman ’bliged to curtchy and look pleased! They ought to have heard her! ‘D— and b— ’em!’ my old gal used to say between her teeth, ‘I wish they had them broken wittles stuffed down their busted throats; why the — can’t they give us it in coppers!’ But she couldn’t say that to them, don’t yer know; she had to put on a grateful mug, and say, ‘Gord bless yer, my dear!’ to the gal, as though, if it hadn’t been for that lot of grub turning up that blessed minute, she must have dropped down dead of starvation.”
“But scran fetched its price in them times, didn’t it, Billy? There was drums where you might sell it long afore your time, don’t you know, Billy?”