“Yas, she’ll have to clear out of here.”
“She’s nigh dying, I reckon,” said the boy.
“Can’t help that; she ain’t paid a copper this three weeks, and I ain’t a-going to have her lumbering up my place no longer.”
“Where’s she a-going to?” asked Stumpy.
“How do I know?—out of ’ere, anyways, and pretty soon, too. I can tell yer.”
“Pal,” said the boy, after a long pause, “I charged yer a tanner too much for that there ticker; here you are, lay hold.”
And he tossed back the sixpence. The man understood quite well the meaning of the act, and Old Sal lay undisturbed all that day.
Stumpy took his departure early. I have never seen him since; what has become of him I know not; where he is now I know still less.
But to return to myself. I spent that entire day in the man’s pocket, too ill to care what became of me, and too weak to notice much of what passed around me. I was conscious of others like Stumpy coming up the creaking stairs and offering their ill-gotten gains as he had done; and I was conscious towards evening, when the last rays of the setting sun were struggling feebly through the dingy window, of a groan in that dismal corner, deeper than all that had gone before. Then I knew Old Sal was dead. In an hour the body was laid in its rude coffin, and had made its last journey down those stairs: and that night another outcast slept in her corner.
The night was like the one which had preceded it, foul and sickening. I was thankful that my illness had sufficiently deadened my senses to render me unable to hear and see all that went on during those hours. Morning came at length, and one by one the youthful lodgers took their departure. When the last had left, my possessor produced a bag, into which he thrust me, with a score or more of other articles acquired as I had been acquired; then, locking the door behind him, he descended the stairs and stepped out.