“Some one’ll ’ave to buy you a collar, too, for Tuesday.”
“Me in a collar?” he said gratified. “My word, I shall be a reg’lar toff, if I ain’t careful.”
“What size—I think that’ll hold—what size do you take, I wonder?”
“Lord knows,” said the boy. “I don’t. I’ve never wore one yet.”
If in Hoxton that day a more conceited boy than Robert Lancaster had been in request, the discovery would have been difficult. He strolled up and down Hoxton Street, where the second-hand furniture dealers place bedsteads brazenly in the roadway, and when shop people, standing at their doors, glanced at the crape band on his sleeve he stood still for a while in order that they might have a good view.
A good-natured Jewess in charge of a fruit stall called to him and inquired the nature of his loss, and on Bobbie supplying the facts (adding to the interest by various details suggested by his imagination) the Jewess gave an enormous sigh and, as token of sympathy, presented him with two doubtful pears and a broken stick of chocolate. Bobbie went up towards New North Road inventing further details of a gruesome nature, in the hope of finding other shopkeepers similarly curious and appreciative, but no one else called to him, and at a confectioner’s shop, where he waited for a long time, a girl with her hair screwed by violent twists of paper came out and said that if he did not leave off breathing on their window she would wring his neck for him; upon Bobbie giving her a brief criticism in regard to the arrangement of her features, she repeated her threat with increased emphasis, and as there was obviously nothing to be gained by further debate, he strolled off with dignity through Fanshaw Street, arriving presently at Drysdale Street. The boys here were boys with an intolerably good opinion of themselves, because they lived in a street over which the railway passed; this made them hold themselves aloof from the other youths of Hoxton, and go through life with the austerity of men who knew the last word about engines. It seemed to Bobbie Lancaster that a chance had now arisen to humiliate Drysdale Street and to lower its pride.
“Cheer!” he said casually.
“Cheer!” said the two boys. They were marking out squares on the pavement for a game of hop-scotch. “Got any more chalk in your pocket, Nose?”
The boy called Nose searched, and shook his head negatively. “Daresay I can oblige you,” remarked Bobbie.
“Look ’ere,” said the first boy with heated courtesy, “did anyone ast you come ’ere standin’ on our pavement?”