“How do, young Stansfield? Wish you could manage this for me.”
And the lad found himself in the very thick of it, so to speak, without a moment’s delay. Cheering from the street below came now and again, startling him and causing him to rush to the windows in the endeavour to ascertain the cause; gentlemen with silk hats at the backs of their heads ran up two stairs at a time to ask how things were going, or to give news of how things were going, bringing tasks or appealing for them, roaring suggestions or shouting advice, talking privately in one corner and illustrating their arguments by pencilling figures on the wallpaper.
At eleven o’clock Mr. Cruttwell took him out, and, carrying a square brown-paper parcel of cards, he made the acquaintance of Southwark under lively circumstances. Mr. Cruttwell did not seem to know exactly what to be doing, but his plan was never to cease doing something, and he constantly appealed to the lad.
“Come along, come along, come along! Don’t lag, my boy, don’t lag!” or, “Now then, slowcoach! Have you gone to sleep again? Keep your eyes open, for goodness’ sake, or we shall never win!”
A most unfair suggestion, for the only founded charge against young Stansfield was that he stared at everything going on; shops arrested him, sandwichmen proved an effective bar to progress. In waiting outside a leather merchant’s in St. Thomas’s Street, a detachment of Borough youths of about his own age came up with a threatening air.
“Who you for?” they demanded menacingly.
“Find out!” he answered.
“Want your ’ead punched?”
“Yes!” he said.
Disinclined to comply with any request, they conferred amongst themselves.