The same story contented the gate-keeper, who gave him the correct time, and Bobbie started along the white road at a quick pace. At the first turning he branched off, and, skirting the fields belonging to the Cottage Homes, returned to the town, where a post-office was to be found. There he changed the postal order. In five minutes he was speeding away Londonwards, with defiant head well out of the carriage windows, a cigarette between his lips, the cornet and his handkerchiefed bundle in his hand.
“This,” said the boy truculently to the distant red-roofed homes, “this’ll let you see what a man can do when he’s put upon.”
CHAPTER VIII.
The confusing eddy of people outside Liverpool Street Station startled him, so that he stood back to let them go by, until he remembered that they did not cease to flow before midnight, and then he laughed at himself and made his way out into Bishopsgate. He had a fine sense of freedom in the consciousness that he was his own master; within wide limitations he could go where he pleased and do as he pleased, and no one had the right to say him nay. It seemed like getting rid of a suit of armour. He gave himself the luxury of swearing softly as he walked along, in order to prove conclusively that he was no longer trammelled by the code of rules that obtained at the Cottage Homes. Walking up towards Shoreditch Church it appeared to the boy that he was as fine a fellow as any in the crowd of men hurrying along the pavement, that his daring and his independence were sufficient for about six ordinary men; he felt very much inclined to stop one or two in order to tell them so. The better to live up to his new character of a regular blade, he turned into the saloon bar of a gorgeous, over-mirrored, over-painted, over-furnished public-house, and addressing a superb young lady who behind the bar read a pamphlet called “An Amusing Way to Pick up Biology,” asked in a deep, effective voice for a sherry and bitters. The superb young lady, seemingly dazed with study, gave him instead a small bottle of lemonade and a hard biscuit; Bobbie, awed by her appearance, did not dare to complain of the mistake. He endeavoured, however, to entice the large young woman into manly conversation by asking her how long it was since she had left the old place, but she only answered absently, without looking up from her hook, “Outside with those bootlaces, please,” and Bobbie refrained from repeating his question.
At the corner of Drysdale Street he met a first friend in the person of Niedermann, otherwise Nose, grown ridiculously tall, and garbed in a frock coat queerly short at the sleeves. Niedermann did not know him at first, but when recognition came he became at once interested, and asked a number of questions, some of which Bobbie answered truthfully.
“What you ought to go and do, ole man,” said Niedermann, acutely, “is to disguise yourself.”
“How d’you mean disguise myself?”
“Why, put on a false beard,” said the frock-coated lad, “and blue spectacles, and what not. You’ll get copped else.”
“They won’t trouble,” said the boy uneasily.
“Take my advice or not, jest as you like. But I know what I should do.”