"Is there any chance of a man getting a job about this district?" I asked.
"What man?" said the shopkeeper.
"Me," I said.
"Get out, ye scamp!" roared the man. "It would be better for you to go to bed instead of tryin' to take a rise out of yer betters."
"You are an old pig!" I shouted at the man, for I did not like his way of speaking, and disappeared into the darkness. I ate the biscuits, but felt hungrier after my meal than I was before it.
The night was calm and deadly cold. Overhead a very pale moon forged its way through a heaven of stars. On such a night it is a pleasure to sit before a nice warm fire on a well-swept hearth. I had no fire, no home, no friends; nothing but the bleak road and the coldness. I kept walking, walking. I knew that it would be unwise to sit down: perhaps I would fall asleep and die. I did not want to die. It was so much better to walk about on the roads of a strange country in which there was nobody to care what became of me; no one except an old harridan, and she was far away from me now. The love of life was strong within me, for I was very young, and never did I cling closer to life than I did at that moment when it was blackest. My thoughts went to the future and the good things which might lie before me.
"I'll get a job yet," I said to myself. "I'll walk about until I meet somebody who needs me. Then I'll grow up in years and work among men, maybe getting a whole pound a week as my pay. A pound a week is a big wage, and it will amount to a lot in a year. I will pay ten shillings a week for my keep in some lodging-house, as Micky's Jim had done when he worked on Greenock pier, and I will save the other half-sovereign. Ten shillings a week amounts to twenty-six pounds a year. In ten years I shall save two hundred and sixty pounds. Such a big lump-sum of money! Two hundred and sixty pounds!
"It will be hard to keep a wife on a pound a week, but I will always remain single, and send my money home to my own people. If I don't, I'll never have any luck. I will never gamble again. Neither will I marry, for women are no earthly use, anyway. They get old, wrinkled, and fat very quickly. They are all alike, every one of them."
I found my thoughts wandering from one subject to another like those of a person who is falling asleep. Anyhow, I had something to live for, so I kept walking, walking on.