“You’re a genelman, I can sees that pretty plainly,” answers the cabman glibly, as he touches his hat, and pockets the half-sovereign. “I’ll wait, sir; no fear.”
Evelyn Ravensdale wanders through the gloomy, ill-lighted streets. Midnight has chimed out from Big Ben; it is getting on towards one o’clock, and he does not meet many people. A policeman or two saunter along their beats, and turn their lights upon him as he passes. Sometimes a man and woman flit past him, or a solitary man by himself. He passes a dark, gloomy-looking archway into which the light from a flickering gas-lamp just penetrates. He can see a boy and girl with white, pinched faces asleep in an old barrel in one corner, a shivering, skinny dog curled up at their feet. The sight is terrible to him. He steps into the archway, and touches the boy on the shoulder. With a frightened cry the lad starts up and eyes him beseechingly.
“Ah, bobby! Don’t turn us out to-night,” he says pleadingly. “Maggie’s so poorly and sick, she can hardly stand up. See, she’s asleep now. Don’t wake her, please, bobby, don’t.”
He starts suddenly, and pulls his forelock as he perceives that it is not a policeman he is talking to. “Beg pardon, sir,” he says, “thought it was a bobby.”
“Have you no better place than this to sleep in, my poor lad?” inquires the duke pityingly, his hand still on the boy’s shoulder.
“Ah, sir! this is a gran’ place. We don’t allays gets the likes o’ this. Poor Maggie, she was so pleased when we found this ’ere barrel. See, sir, how she do sleep.”
“Is Maggie your sister?” asks the young duke, with a half-sob.
“No, sir, she’s my gal. Maggie and me, we’ves been together a long time now, we has.”
“And what do you do for a living, boy?” continues Evelyn Ravensdale gently.
“Anything, sir, we can get to do. It’s not allays we can get a job, and then we have to go hungry like.”