“There he goes!“ shouted a baker’s boy at this moment, looking up and pointing at Gray, who nearly fell into the street with the suddenness of the alarm.
Several chance passengers now stopped, and pointed Gray out to others; so that his situation was becoming every moment more precarious.
“Stop thief! There he goes!” shouted the boy again, setting down his basket of bread, and resolved, as boys always are under such circumstances, to see the affair out.
“Who is it?” cried several.
“Guy Fawkes,” said the boy.
There was a laugh among the crowd, which was rapidly increasing; and now an old lady put her head out of the window of the house on the parapet of which was the trembling Jacob Gray, and inquired, in an angry tone, what was the matter, and particularising the baker’s boy as a young ruffian, wanted to know how he had collected the crowd opposite the house.
The boy with the peculiar wit of his “order” placed his hand to his ear, affecting not to have heard the old lady, upon which, to the great amusement of the crowd, she screamed out—,
“Oh, you villain, I heard you call me a guy, but I’ll speak to your master, I will, you wretch.”
“You’ll make yerself ill, mum,” said the boy, “if yer hexerts yer old lungs so.”
The old lady shook her fists at him, and the crowd roared with laughter.