“Aye, that he has,” drawled out a half naked lusty young fellow, raising himself slowly up from the form where he had been stretched his full length, laying upon his face, the sluggard’s favourite position. Hogarth, or Joe Lisle, or any other character hunter, might have taken this youth for the very Son of Idleness. There might alternately be traced in his heavy features sluggard, loon, fool, and rascal. “Aye, that’s very true,” he observed, “it was coming to St. Giles’s that was the ruin of me; and them there lasses,” pointing to a ruddy-faced girl, who had just popped her brazen front in at the door, and who, in return for his salutation, politely placed her finger on one side of her nose, then raising the hinder part of her body touched it, in a style that would scarcely be tolerated at St. James’s.
“Ah, you imp of Satan!” he bellowed out, as the young vixen scampered away between a dance and a run, and again commenced his story:
“It was coming to St. Giles’s, I was saying, was the ruin of me. I robbed my father, but I got clear of that; then I robbed my mother, I got turned away for that; my sisters took me in, I robbed them, and was first to cut; at last, my aunt pitied and took care of me, I robbed her too. But I got three month for that, and—”
“Hold your tongue, you ass,” exclaimed half-a-dozen voices, “the booby’s mad, and should be sent to St. Luke’s.”
At this rebuff the hopeful youth grinned a grin something like the triumph of a fool glorying in his shame; then thrusting his hand into his bosom, was for a few moments lost in heavenly bliss, enjoying that most ecstatic of enjoyments, which King Jamie, of clawing memory, says, ought always to be reserved for kings—scratching; then rolled himself down again, to have a little more folding of the arms, and a little more slumber.
