“What made you think I would come?” said Reginald, looking down with tears in his eyes on the poor wizened upturned face.
“I knowed you was a-comin’,” repeated the boy, as if he could not say it too often; “and I waited and waited, and there you are. It’s all right, gov’nor.”
“It is all right, old fellow,” said Reginald. “You don’t know what you’ve saved me from.”
“Go on,” said the boy, recovering his composure in the great content of his discovery. “I ain’t saved you from nothink. Leastways unless you was a-goin’ to commit soosanside. If you was, you was a flat to come this way. That there railway-cutting’s where I’d go, and then at the inkwidge they don’t know if you did it a-purpose or was topped over by the train, and they gives you the benefit of the doubt, and says, ‘Found dead.’”
“We won’t talk about it,” said Reginald, smiling, the first smile that had crossed his lips for a week. “Do you know, young ’un, I’m hungry; are you?”
“Got any browns?” said Love.
“Not a farthing.”
“More ain’t I, but I’ll—” He paused, and a shade of doubt crossed his face as he went on. “Say, gov’nor, think they’d give us a brown for this ’ere Robinson?”
And he pulled out his Robinson Crusoe bravely and held it up.
“I’m afraid not. It only cost threepence.”