I bring to mind two memorable nights in connection with Nick and Nan. The girl came first, the lad second.
I had for company at this time a white mastiff, I called Dummy, who trotted at my heels, from the moment I commenced my work of a night, till I got home in the morning and threw myself, regularly tired out, on my bed.
Dummy was not a nice-tempered dog, but he never interfered with anyone, who did not interfere with him, or unless he had, in his own opinion, a good reason for interfering.
He was a faithful creature, and would not make friends with strangers, and although I have always been sociably inclined myself, I did not find fault with him, for this disinclination for any society but mine. Every man likes something, that he can call really his own, and Dummy’s conservative ways made me all the more attached to him.
One night, about ten o’clock, there was a scrimmage in Chapel-street, and before I knew where I was, I found myself in the middle of it.
It was an ugly row between Lascar sailors and sugar-bakers, and I don’t know which looked most like devils, the Lascars with their dark faces and flashing eyes, or the sugar-bakers, who had trooped out of the factory, naked to their waists, and with their matted hair hanging in disorder about their perspiring foreheads. They had snatched some of their red-hot tools from the furnace, and the Lascars out with their knives. Dummy was in the middle of the fight, and I was a good deal knocked about.
When it was all over, I was some distance from the spot, upon which the row had commenced, and Dummy was not by my side. I went about the streets calling and looking for him, and after half an hour’s search, I saw him on the ground, with his leg badly gashed, and a girl kneeling by him and attending to the wound.
“Mind, my girl,” I cried, “or the dog will bite you. He’s savage to strangers.”
I knelt down, and Dummy licked my hand.
“He won’t hurt me,” said Nan. “Poor doggie! His leg’s cut to the bone.”