Here Bobby paused, for at the moment his little friend Tim Lumpy recurred to his memory, and a bright thought struck him.
“Well, boy, why do you pause?”
“I was on’y thinkin’, marm, that if you wants to befriend us poor boys—they calls us waifs an’ strays an’ all sorts of unpurlite names—you’ve on’y got to send a sov, or two to Miss Annie Macpherson, ’Ome of Hindustry, Commercial Street, Spitalfields, an’ you’ll be the means o’ doin’ a world o’ good—as I ’eard a old gen’l’m with a white choker on say the wery last time I was down there ’avin’ a blow out o’ bread an’ soup.”
“I know the lady and the Institution well, my boy,” said the old lady, “and will act on your advice, but—”
Ere she finished the sentence Bobby Frog had turned and fled at the very top of his speed.
“Stop! stop! stop!” exclaimed the old lady in a weakly shout.
But the “remarkable boy” would neither stop nor stay. He had suddenly caught sight of a policeman turning into the lane, and forthwith took to his heels, under a vague and not unnatural impression that if that limb of the law found him in possession of a half-crown he would refuse to believe his innocence with as much obstinacy as the little old lady had refused to believe his guilt.
On reaching home he found his mother alone in a state of amused agitation which suggested to his mind the idea of Old Tom.
“Wot, bin at it again, mother?”
“No, no, Bobby, but somethin’s happened which amuses me much, an’ I can’t keep it to myself no longer, so I’ll tell it to you, Bobby.”