“Mulligrumps?” inquired his sympathetic friend.
“No, no. Nothin’ o’ that sort, but a kind of hot all-overishness, wi’ pains that—but you can’t understand it, Stumpy, if you’ve never ’ad it.”
“Then I don’t want to understand it. But what has all this to do wi’ your dream?”
“Everythink to do with it, ’cause it was about them I was dreamin’. As I was sayin’, I fell down at their door, an’ they took me in, and Mrs Wilkin nussed me for weeks till I got better. Oh, she’s a rare nuss is Mrs Wilkin. An’ when I began to get better the kids all took to me. I don’t know when I would have left them, but when times became bad, an’ Dick couldn’t git work, and Mrs Wilkin and the kids began to grow thin, I thought it was time for me to look out for myself, an’ not remain a burden on ’em no longer. I know’d they wouldn’t let me away without a rumpus, so I just gave ’em the slip, and that’s ’ow I came to be on the streets again, an’ fell in wi’ you, Stumpy.”
“’Ave you never seen ’em since?”
“Never.”
“You ungrateful wagibone!”
“What was the use o’ my goin’ to see ’em w’en I ’ad nothin’ to give ’em?” returned Owlet in an apologetic tone.
“You might ’ave given ’em the benefit of your adwice if you ’ad nothin’ else. But what did you dream about ’em?”
“I dreamt that they was all starvin’—which ain’t unlikely to be true—an’ I was so cut up about it, that I went straight off to a butcher’s shop and stole a lot o’ sasengers; then to a baker’s and stole a loaf the size of a wheel-barrer; then to a grocer’s and stole tea an’ sugar; an’ the strange thing was that neither the people o’ the shops nor the bobbies seemed to think I was stealin’! Another coorious thing was that I carried all the things in my pockets—stuffed ’em in quite easy, though there was ’arf a sack o’ coals among ’em!”