He chanced to have one of Miss Macpherson’s Canadian Homes for London Wanderers in his pocket, and gave it to the little shoe-black,—who was one of the fluttering free-lances of the metropolis, not one of the “Brigade.”
Bob could not have said another word to have saved his life. He turned quickly on his heel and walked away, followed by a fixed gaze and a prolonged whistle of astonishment.
“How hungry I used to be here,” he muttered as he walked along, “so uncommon hungry! The smell of roasts and pies had something to do with it, I think. Why, there’s the shop—yes, the very shop, where I stood once gazing at the victuals for a full hour before I could tear myself away. I do think that, for the sake of starving boys, to say nothing of men, women, and girls, these grub-shops should be compelled to keep the victuals out o’ the windows and send their enticing smells up their chimneys!”
Presently he came to a dead stop in front of a shop where a large mirror presented him with a full-length portrait of himself, and again he said mentally, “Can it be possible!” for, since quitting London he had never seen himself as others saw him, having been too hurried, on both occasions of passing through Canadian cities, to note the mirrors there. In the backwoods, of course, there was nothing large enough in the way of mirror to show more than his good-looking face.
The portrait now presented to him was that of a broad-chested, well-made, gentlemanly young man of middle height, in a grey Tweed suit.
“Not exactly tip-top, A1, superfine, you know, Bobby,” he muttered to himself with the memory of former days strong upon him, “but—but—perhaps not altogether unworthy of—of—a thought or two from little Martha Mild.”
Bob Frog increased in stature, it is said, by full half an inch on that occasion, and thereafter he walked more rapidly in the direction of Whitechapel.
With sad and strangely mingled memories he went to the court where his early years had been spent. It was much the same in disreputableness of aspect as when he left it. Time had been gnawing at it so long that a few years more or less made little difference on it, and its inhabitants had not improved much.
Passing rapidly on he went straight to the Beehive, which he had for long regarded as his real home, and there, once again, received a hearty welcome from its ever busy superintendent and her earnest workers; but how different his circumstances now from those attending his first reception! His chief object, however, was to inquire the way to the hospital in which his father lay, and he was glad to learn that the case of Ned Frog was well-known, and that he was convalescent.
It chanced that a tea-meeting was “on” when he arrived, so he had little more at the time than a warm shake of the hand from his friends in the Home, but he had the ineffable satisfaction of leaving behind him a sum sufficient to give a sixpence to each of the miserable beings who were that night receiving a plentiful meal for their bodies as well as food for their souls—those of them, at least, who chose to take the latter. None refused the former.