A Son of the State

by W. Pett Ridge

“Shut it!” commanded Bat Miller, knocking at the door of the back room sharply. “Get off to sleep, can’t you?” He turned to the others. “And now,” he said with a change of manner, “let’s see what kind of a little present this young genelman’s bin and brought ’ome for us.”

“I b’lieve he pinched it for me,” said young Mrs. Miller cheerfully, “’cause to-day isn’t my birthday.”

Bobbie, with something of majesty, brought from his pocket a heavy gold watch and part of a gold chain, and laid them on the table. The four put their heads together and examined the property. Then they beamed round upon the small boy.

“I foresee, Bobbie,” said the Duchess, in complimentary tones, “that you’re a goin’ to grow up a bright, smart, useful young chep.”

“He’ll want trainin’,” suggested Mr. Bat Miller.

“And watchin’,” growled Mr. Leigh.

“And when he gets to be a man,” said young Mrs. Miller facetiously, as she pulled off her boots, “all the gels in the neighbourhood ’ll be after him.”

With these praises clanging and resounding in his heated little brain, Bobbie went upstairs to bed.

CHAPTER IV.

For nearly a year Bobbie Lancaster lived his young life in Ely Place. Although every day was not so full of incident as the first, he could not charge dulness against his existence; the standard of happiness set up in Ely Place not being a high one, was therefore easily reached; monotony at any rate came rarely. When other plans failed, quarrels could always be relied upon, and these gave such joy, not only to the chief actors and actresses, but also to the audience, that it seemed small wonder so successful a performance should be frequently repeated. Now and again events occurred which flattered Bobbie, and gave him the dearest satisfaction a small boy can experience—that of being treated as though he were grown up. It had not taken Mr. Leigh and Mr. Bat Miller long to recognize that in Bobbie they had a promising apprentice; one so obstinately honest as to be of great assistance to them in their dishonest profession. They exercised due caution in taking him into their confidence. For instance, he was still at the end of the year not sure why it was that the back room on the ground floor remained always locked; why its windows, facing a yard, and overlooked by the huge straggling workhouse, were closely shuttered. He knew that a man worked there; he knew that this man was called The Fright, and Mrs. Miller, on one expansive evening when in admirable humour, told him that The Fright was by trade a silver chaser. Presuming on some additional knowledge acquired at a time when supposed to be asleep, he demanded of the two men further particulars; Mr. Bat Miller replied fiercely that spare the rod and spoil the child had never been his motto, and thereupon gave Bobbie the worst thrashing that the boy had ever dreamed of. Following this, the boy found himself for some days treated with great coldness by the adult members of the household, and made to feel that he was no longer in the movement. When either of the men went out in the evening, the boy was not permitted to go also; he found himself deprived of adventurous excursions into the suburbs; the casual loafing about at busy railway stations was denied to him. So keenly did he feel this ostracism that he had tumultuous thoughts of giving himself up to the School Board inspector whom he had hitherto dodged, and of devoting his time to the acquirement of useful knowledge; it is right to add that the idea of betraying any of the secrets which he had learnt concerning the habits of the two men never for a moment occurred to him. An alternative was to buy a revolver similar to the one possessed by Teddy Sullivan, and to go out somewhere and shoot someone; the latter faintly-sketched plan was rubbed out because Master Sullivan, his friend, encountered disaster one evening in Union Street. In the course of a strenuous hand-to-hand fight between Hackney Road boys and Hoxton boys, a point arrived where the Hoxton boys found themselves badly worsted, whereupon Master Sullivan, with a sentence plagiarized from a penny romance which he knew almost by heart, “Ten thousand furies take you, you dastardly scoundrels,” whipped out his revolver, and closing his eyes, fired, injuring two or three promising juveniles from the tributary streets of Hackney Road, and, as a last consequence of this act, finding himself exposed to the glory of police court proceedings, and to the indignity of a birching.