"Coorse they did! How many policeman was there, lassie?"
"There was free I see first. And one he turned back down the road. Only there was men, as well as policemen."
"Chaps?"
"Yass! And there was the boys. And there was a woman. And there was another woman. Only not sober." So she didn't count, that one; was civilly disqualified, as it were. But was the sober one making herself of use?—Jim inquires. "She wasn't finding any fault," is all the testimony Lizarann can give. It seems to imply that the drunken one was indicting the executive. Lizarann finishes up her report: "Then there was Mother Groves, and the 'ot-chestnut stall at the corner, and the Young Varmint." For this is the name—no less—by which Frederick Hawkins is known to Lizarann and her Daddy.
"So there they all was, the biling of 'em," said Jim. "And there was Daddy, he'd got himself under a cart, and was a bit the worse by it. And his little lass, she come and kissed him, for to cheer him up—hay, lassie? Nor never cried, nor made no noise, like he told her not to."
Lizarann felt proud and happy. But she could not endure a position with the slightest false pretence in it. "I did cried, too," she said, "when I got so far as Dartley Street. And the boy, he says not to water-cart."
"The Young Varmint?"
"Yass! He toldited me his nime, he did. Hawkins—Frederick—Hawkins." Lizarann gives the exact words the boy had said. "And he says not to water-cart because of his aunt and uncle. Took to the Sospital quite flat they was, and begun singing a fortnight after!" Jim made concession to the Young Varmint—went so far as to say that he would not warm his hide for him this time, pr'aps! But he spoke without confidence of the like abstention being justified in the future.
"And then the lassie come home," said he. "And who come to the door?"
"Only me, Daddy!"