has he led me. I ventured even into the haunts of the brown rats, for his presence was a sufficient protection. None would have dared to attack me while he was beside me, – I should hardly have been afraid of a cat!
I had naturally a fancy for roving, and a great desire to know more of the world; and what better guide could I have had than the heroic Whiskerandos? He had not, however, been so great a traveller as Furry, – he had never yet crossed the water; but he and I determined, on some favourable opportunity, to take our passage in a ship, and explore some foreign region together.
There was but one subject on which Whiskerandos and I were ever in danger of quarrelling. I had made up my mind – and Furry, who was a very learned rat, was quite of the same opinion – that the ancestors of the brown rats came over from Hanover to England with George I. We liked to call them Hanover rats, but this gave great offence to the race, as it made their antiquity so much less than that which we claimed for ourselves.
“You affirm,” Whiskerandos would exclaim, “that you came over from Normandy in 1066, and we from Hanover in 1714, and that nothing was ever heard of us before that time. I affirm that it is a calumny, a base calumny! We came from Persia, from the land of the East; an army of us swam across the Volga, driven by an earthquake from our own country. Depend upon it, we were known there in ancient times, and went over Xerxes’ great bridge of boats, and nibbled at his tent-ropes and gnawed his cheese while he fought with the Greeks at Thermopylæ.”
“After all,” thought I – I did not say it aloud, for the great weakness of Whiskerandos was his pride of birth, his anxiety to be thought of an ancient family – “the great matter is not whether our ancestors do honour to us, but whether by our conduct we do not disgrace our ancestors.”
CHAPTER V
HOW BOB MET WITH AN ADVENTURE
I was often puzzled by the conduct of Bob; that was to be expected, seeing that I was a young and ignorant rat, quite inexperienced in the doings of man. Once or twice Bob had brought to the shed things which he could not eat and did not wear. I could neither imagine where he had got them, what he intended to do with them, nor what possible use he could make of them. He seemed inclined to hide them; and once, when he was showing to Billy a red handkerchief covered with white spots (though the weather was bitterly cold, he never attempted to tie it round his neck), the little boy looked up gravely into his face and said, “Oh, Bob, arn’t you afeard?”
“What am I to do; we can’t starve, Billy.” He looked so wan and so woe-begone, as he bent over the little lame child, that it seemed to me that never was a creature so wretched as that desolate boy. The next morning he took away the handkerchief, and in the evening he brought home bread.
Once when he returned, the snow was fast falling, drifting through the roof, and in at the door, till Billy could scarcely find a clear spot on which to rest his languid little frame. He was always on the look-out for his brother, as soon as the sky began to darken. Well might he watch on that day, for he had not broken his fast since the evening before; and his lips were blue with hunger and cold, and he was lonely, very lonely, in the shed.
Presently Bob came hastily in; we had not heard his step on the soft snow. The flakes were resting on his rags and whitening his hair, as he threw himself down by his brother.
“Oh! Billy!” he exclaimed, and burst into tears.
“What have you got?” cried the little one joyfully. “A big loaf!” and he tore it asunder in his eager haste, and ate like a famished creature.
“And see this!” said Bob; and he wrapped round the shivering child a warm cloak which he had carried on his arm.
Billy opened his eyes with an expression of astonishment, which brightened into joy as he felt the unwonted warmth. “Oh! Bob!” he exclaimed, with his mouth full of bread; “where did you get this? Did you steal it?”
“No; and I’ll never steal no more; never, never!” and the boy sank his head down upon his chest, and sobbed. I had never seen him shed a tear till that day.
“Tell me all about it, tell me!” cried Billy, almost frightened by his brother’s unwonted emotion; but it was a little time before Bob made reply.
“I followed he – a fine, tall gemman. I had my fingers in his pocket, and he clapped his hand on ’em, and catched me!”
“Oh!” exclaimed Billy, with eyes and mouth wide open, in alarm. “And did he not call the beaks, and have you up?”
“No; he spoke to me; he spoke so kind-like. He told me that I was about a sin – a great sin. Nobody never spoke so to me afore!” Again the boy’s feelings seemed ready to burst forth. “And he took me to a baker’s, and got me this; and to a shop, and bought me that; and says he, “Has no one taught you to know right from wrong?” And says I, “Nobody never taught me nothing!” Then he takes me a good way round, down a little lane, right into a Ragged School.”
“What’s that?” inquired Billy curiously.
“A place where a great many poor boys were together in a big room, where there were wooden benches, and pictures and other things hung on the walls. I should never have dared to go in; but that good gemman took me, and led me right up to a man who was standing with a row of little chaps afore him. And the gemman put his hand on my shoulder, and spoke for me, and said a many things that I can’t remember; but one thing I remember quite well: “You come here every evening,” says he, “and you’ll be taught your duty, and how to do it. I am leaving London soon; but I will be back in a few weeks, and I’ll come and ask the master how you have been behaving; and if I find that you’ve been trying to become a better boy, I will not lose sight of you, my friend.”
“Did the gemman say all that?” exclaimed Billy.
“And a great deal more. Such beautiful talking! And to see how gentle and kind he looked, as if he didn’t think me such a bad un after all!”
“Did you tell him of me?” asked Billy anxiously.
“Yes; I told him that I had one little brother, and he was lame; and that mother was dead and father in jail, and that we had no one to care for us, and that we were often hungry, and always cold; and he looked quite sorry to hear it.”
“Did he though?” cried Billy, much surprised. “And will you go to the Ragged School, Bobby?”
“Won’t I!” cried the boy, with a little more energy than I had seen in him before; “why, if I don’t, I won’t see that good gemman again!”
“And won’t you take me with you too?” said little Billy.
CHAPTER VI
HOW I VISITED THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS
That night I set out with Whiskerandos on more extended travels than any which I had yet attempted. Oddity might have accompanied us, but he preferred, as he said, home comforts and a nibble in the warehouse. I knew that he would look after old Furry, whose infirmities were sadly increasing upon him, so that I had no fear of the blind rat being neglected.
I suspected that more than one reason induced my pie-bald brother to decline the tour. He had struck up an acquaintance with Bright-eyes, a lively little rat, and probably found his society more agreeable than that of Whiskerandos, of whom he always stood somewhat in awe. I shall not pause on the description of our underland journey through the wondrous labyrinth of passages which, like a net-work, spreads in every direction under the foundations of London. I saw more rats
