“Well, I donʼt know,” replied Cradock, who could not bear to simulate intense determination; “I should like a trip into the country, if I could earn my wages as agent, or whatever it is. But suppose the canal is frozen up before our voyage begins, Jupp?”
“Oh, d—n that!” cried Issachar, for the idea was too much for him, even in Cradockʼs presence; “I never yet knew a long winter, sir, after a wonderful stormy autumn.”
And in that conclusion he was right, to the best of my experience. Perhaps because the stormy autumn shows the set of the Gulf Stream.
By this time more than a month had passed since Cradock and Wena arrived in London; half his money was spent, and he had found no employment. He had advertised, and answered advertisements, till he was tired. He had worn out his one pair of boots with walking, for he had thought it better to walk, as it might be of service to him to know London thoroughly; and that knowledge can only be acquired by perpetual walking. No man can be said to know London thoroughly, who does not know the suburbs also—who, if suddenly put down at the Elephant and Castle, or at Shoreditch Church, cannot tell exactly whither each of the six fingers points. Such knowledge very few men possess; it requires the genius loci—to apply the expression barbarously—as well as peculiar calls upon it. Cradock, of course, could not attain such knowledge in a month. Indeed, he was obliged to ask his way to so well–known a part as Hammersmith, when he had seen an advertisement for a clerk, to help in some coal–office there.
With the water quelching in his boots (which were worn away to the welting)—for the sky was like the pulp of an orange, and the pavement wanted draining—he turned in at a little gate near the temporary terminus of the West London line. In a wooden box, with a kitchen behind it, he found Mr. Clinkers; who thought, when he saw Cradʼs face, that he was come to give a large order; and when he saw his boots, that he was come to ask to be errand–boy. Clinkers was a familiar, jocular, red–faced fellow, whom his friends were fond of calling “not at all a bad sort.”
“Take a glass, mister,” said he, when Cradock had stated his purpose; “wonʼt do you no harm such a day as this, and I donʼt fancy ‘twould me either. Jenny! Jenny! Why, bless that gal; ever since my poor wife died, sheʼs along of them small–coals fellows. Iʼll bet a tanner she is. What do you say to it, sir? Will you bet?”
“Well,” replied Cradock, smiling, “it wouldnʼt be at all a fair bet. In the first place, I know nothing of Miss Jennyʼs propensities; and, in the second, I have no idea what the small–coals fellows are.”
The small–coals men are the truck–drivers and the greengrocers in the by–streets, who buy the crushings and riddlings by the sack, at the wharf or terminus, and sell them by the quarter hundred–weight, weight, at a profit of two hundred per cent. Cradock might have known this, but the Ducksacre firm was reticent upon some little matters.
Mr. Clinkers could not stop to explain; only he said to himself, “Pretty fellow to apply for a clerkship in the coal–line, and not know that!”
Jenny appeared at last, looking perfectly self–possessed.