It was now admitted by the whole of the company that only keep off any glaring annoyance, and the police would never say you did wrong.
“Well, well,” observed Jack, “I believe, after all, London is still the place. I was once put into limbo in Norfolk, fourteen days, for simply asking a gentleman for a little money, and —— me, if the constables there won’t swear that old Belzebub is white, sooner than they will let a man clear. And now,” said he, shaking the ashes out of his pipe, “I must to work once more, or else there will be short allowance to-morrow, I know.”
At this there was a general movement among the company; even the sluggard himself raised up his heavy lump of a body, as if necessity had just given him a call,—yawned, and fumbled with his hands about his head and breast. For, be it known, that those ease-loving people have as great a respect for the Sabbath, as Sir Andrew Agnew himself; not that they care anything for such a place as a church, but for that inherent dislike which the whole tribe have to anything in the shape of labour, and which induces them to make an extra push on a Saturday night, in order that they may enjoy the Sunday as a holiday, with the rest of the labouring classes. It must likewise not be forgotten, that the police are rather indulgent on a Saturday night, but more watchful on the Lord’s day.
“Where shall we stand?” demanded a tape and thimble seller to a dealer in matches. “Tottenham Court, or Clare Market.”
“Clare Market, to be sure!” answered the other; “and we will have a drop of rum at the new gin-shop. I had half a pint there this morning with Morgan, and it was prime.”
“Come, Blacksmith,” (the name given to the fellow whom we had designated the sloth,) said a half-naked lad, with a strong Irish accent, “Come, boy, come, we must be dodging.”
“Aye,” replied his heavy crony, “I suppose we must. Have you got any browns (pence) about you, Paddy?”
“Yes,” said the Hibernian, “I can sthand a quarthern.”
“Then, we’ll go.”
And accordingly they prepared, the sluggard in a soldier’s flannel jacket, and a tattered pair of breeks, which was all that he considered requisite for the weather and his own particular profession. Paddy, a lean, pale-faced lad of eighteen, whose features bore the look of emaciation, from the continual use of tobacco—the pipe or quid never being out of his mouth, save at meals, (a short black stump now ornamented his jaws)—with a shirt upon his back that had been as much acquainted with soap as the owner’s skin, and a thin pair of canvass trousers, was the finish complete to this vagabond’s costume. Away they went, in the true shipwrecked sailor-begging style—their arms folded, bodies bent, and lifting their feet at every step, as if they were afraid to touch the ground for cold, and which contributed to give them that rocking gait so peculiar to the sons of the ocean—their whole frames, too, shivering as if the frosty breath of Old Winter was stealing through their veins:—the sluggard to whine and cry for melting charity at the foot of Ludgate Hill, and Paddy, in his shirt, to cadge, at ten o’clock at night, in the windiest nook on Blackfriars Bridge.