But the sound of that song and the meeting with Mr. Ford’s client determined him to wait no longer, but to make a desperate effort for freedom then and there. The Cheap Jack was collecting the pence, and Jan had made a few bold black strokes as a beginning of a new sketch, when he ran up to the Cheap Jack and whispered, “Get me a ha’perth of whitening, father, as fast as you can. There’s an oil-shop yonder.”
“All right, Jan,” said the hunchback. “Keep ’em together, my dear, meanwhile. We’re doing prime, and you shall have a sausage for supper.”
As the Cheap Jack waddled away for the whitening, Jan said to the lockers-on, “Keep your places, ladies and gentlemen, till I return, and keep your eyes on the drawing, which is the last of the series,” and ran off down a narrow street, at right angles to the oil-shop.
The crowd waited patiently for some moments. Then the Cheap Jack hurried back with the whitening. But Jan returned no more.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE BAKER.—ON AND ON.—THE CHURCH BELL.—A DIGRESSION.—A FAMILIAR HYMN.—THE BOYS’ HOME.
Jan stopped at last from lack of breath to go on. His feet had been winged by terror, and he looked back even now with fear to see the Cheap Jack’s misshapen figure in pursuit. He had had no food for hours, but the pence the dark gentleman had given him were in his chalk pouch, and he turned into the first baker’s shop he came to to buy a penny loaf. It was a small shop, served by a pleasant-faced man, who went up and down, humming, whistling, and singing,—
“Like tiny pipe of wheaten straw,
The wren his little note doth swell,
And every living thing that flies”—
“A penny loaf, please,” said Jan, laying down the money, and the man turned and said, “Why, you be the boy that draws on the pavement!”
For a moment Jan was silent. It presented itself to him as a new difficulty, that he was likely to be recognized. There was a flour barrel by the counter, and as he pondered he began mechanically to sift the flour through his finger and thumb.