“How dare you come here, you scoundrel?” exclaimed the merchant in a rage.
“Don’t call me a scoundrel!” retorted Jeffreys, his temper suddenly breaking out.
“I’ll call a policeman if you are not out of here in half a minute. Here, you boys,” added he, calling his six or eight clerks, “turn this wretch out of the place. Do you hear?”
Jeffreys spared them the trouble and stepped into the street, determined to die before he laid himself open to such an indignity again.
His last night’s experience at a common lodging-house did not tempt him to seek shelter again now, and as it was a fine mild night even at that time of year he trudged out of York into one of the suburbs, where at least everything was clean and quiet. He had the good fortune in a country lane to come across a wagon laid up by the roadside, just inside a field—a lodging far more tempting than that offered by Mr Josephs, and considerably cheaper. The fatigues and troubles of the day operated like a feather-bed for the worn-out and dispirited outcast, and he slept soundly, dreaming of Forrester, and the bookshop, and the dog Julius.
Next morning the weary search began again. Jeffreys, as he trudged back to the city, felt that he was embarked on a forlorn hope. Yet a man must live, and a sovereign cannot last for ever. He passed a railway embankment where a gang of navvies were hard at work. As he watched them he felt half envious. They had work to do, they had homes to return to at night, they had characters, perhaps. Most of them were big strong fellows like himself. Why should he not become one of them? He fancied he could wheel a barrow, and ply a crowbar, and dig with a spade, as well as any of them; he was not afraid of hard work any more than they were, and the wages that kept a roof over their heads would surely keep a roof over his.
As he sat on a bank by the roadside and watched them, he had almost resolved to walk across to the foreman and ask for a job, when the sound of voices close to him arrested him.
They were boys’ voices, and their talk evidently referred to himself, “Come along, Teddy,” said one. “He won’t hurt.”
“I’m afraid,” said the other. “He’s so ugly.”
“Perhaps that’s how he gets his living—scaring the crows,” said the first speaker.