A Son of the State

by W. Pett Ridge

“Can I do anything?” asked the long young journalist.

“Yes!”

“Tell me!”

“Keep your head shut,” said the boy gruffly. “I don’t want no one interfering with my affairs.”

“Deplorable thing,” remarked Myddleton West aside to the sergeant, “for a child like that.”

“Not at all, sir,” said Mr. Thorpe, “not at all. We’ve nabbed him just in time.”

CHAPTER V.

Events occurred with a rapidity that, in view of their importance, seemed to Bobbie frankly indecorous. No sooner had he been placed between parallel iron bars in a police court than he was whisked from the iron bars, on the direction of a magistrate, who had a kindly manner with children; after a brief week at the workhouse, looked after by a burly inmate (known to colleagues by the satirical name of the Slogger), Bobbie found himself again carried off swiftly to the court, where, when a number of cases had been heard in which foreign gentlemen and foreign ladies told everything but the truth, Bobbie was hurried in and directed to stand by the side of the dock, an order that annoyed him because this was clearly an attempt to treat him as though he were not a grown up and a perfect criminal. In the rooms adjoining the court he had seen Bat Miller, and Bat Miller had had opportunity of mentioning that he was the only one who would get put away, and that when he came out it would be his pleasurable duty to see that Mrs. Bat Miller found herself repaid for all her trouble.

Scarce had the boy taken up an attitude of “don’t care” at the side of the dock, and scarce had he commenced to prepare a short remark of defiance for the benefit of Master Ted Sullivan, the shooting youth (whom he saw at the back of the court), when he found himself hustled out of the court by the public door; on kicking the gaoler protestingly in leaving, the gaoler boxed his ears, telling him that he would find somebody outside to teach him manners. Outside, indeed, was an official from the workhouse, who re-conducted him to the huge building that threw out its wings in various directions at the back of Ely Place, and there they had no sooner arrived than Bobbie, being now the charge and ward of the guardians, found himself added to a party of children made up of six boys and seven girls (nearly all of them younger than himself), who were carried away in charge of the Slogger and a grim, silent comrade of the Slogger, to a London station that Bobbie knew, there to take train for the parish schools which Wisdom, looking in some years before at a meeting of the Guardians, had suggested. All this rapidity of action made the boy extremely sulky; when the Slogger, in workhouse uniform, offered him a few choice flowers of advice culled from the spacious gardens of experience, in the shape of hints on the way of living in the world at the minimum of labour to yourself and the maximum of expense to other people, Bobbie growled at the Slogger’s well-meant counsel, and would have found the journey away into Essex tedious but for the fact that he heard a woman in the next compartment remark that he possessed a bright little face. The compliment saved him from depression, and made him put his cap straight.

Arrived at a country station, the small band of thin-faced children marched out into the roadway in charge of the two men. One of the youngest baby girls had just decided the moment to be opportune for wailing, when they happened on a scene that changed the attitude of everybody from the Slogger down to the smallest boy in petticoats. The sight being new to Bobbie, his interest and delight increased accordingly. The Slogger seemed to have exercised enough energy at some period of his life to have obtained certain information, and was in consequence able to give the scene a title.