All the while he kept swaying his body to and fro, twisting his arms and legs, and making faces. Comical figures made of ginger-bread, with quaintly curved limbs and grinning features, were to be bought then in bakers' shops: he made me hungry, reminding me of such.
“Of course not. When you are dead you're not there, you know. Our bodies are but senseless clay.” I was glad I remembered that line. I tried to think of the next one, which was about food for worms; but it evaded me.
“I like you,” he said; and making a fist, he gave me a punch in the chest. It was the token of palship among the youth of that neighbourhood, and gravely I returned it, meaning it, for friendship with children is an affair of the instant, or not at all, and I knew him for my first chum.
He wormed himself up.
“Yer won't tell?” he said.
I had no notion what I was not to tell, but our compact demanded that I should agree.
“Say 'I swear.'”
“I swear.”
The heroes of my favourite fiction bound themselves by such like secret oaths. Here evidently was a comrade after my own heart.
“Good-bye, cockey.”