Twelve months’ experience had done much to increase Martha’s love for the old lady, but it had done nothing to reduce her surprise; for Martha, as yet, did not understand a joke. This, of itself, formed a subject of intense amusement to old Mrs Merryboy, who certainly made the most of circumstances, if ever woman did.
“Have some more fish, Bob,” said Mrs Merryboy, junior.
Bob accepted more, gratefully. So did Tim, with alacrity.
“What sort of a home had you in London, Tim?” asked Mrs Merryboy.
“Well, ma’am, I hadn’t no home at all.”
“No home at all, boy; what do you mean? You must have lived somewhere.”
“Oh yes, ma’am, I always lived somewheres, but it wasn’t nowheres in partikler. You see I’d neither father nor mother, an’ though a good old ’ooman did take me in, she couldn’t purvide a bed or blankets, an’ her ’ome was stuffy, so I preferred to live in the streets, an’ sleep of a night w’en I couldn’t pay for a lodgin’, in empty casks and under wegitable carts in Covent Garden Market, or in empty sugar ’ogsheads. I liked the ’ogsheads best w’en I was ’ungry, an’ that was most always, ’cause I could sometimes pick a little sugar that was left in the cracks an’ ’oles, w’en they ’adn’t bin cleaned out a’ready. Also I slep’ under railway-arches, and on door-steps. But sometimes I ’ad raither disturbed nights, ’cause the coppers wouldn’t let a feller sleep in sitch places if they could ’elp it.”
“Who are the ‘coppers?’” asked the good lady of the house, who listened in wonder to Tim’s narration.
“The coppers, ma’am, the—the—pl’eece.”
“Oh! the police?”