nose was a perfect aquiline; the decided mouth might have belonged to a prime minister with the blood of the Plantagenets in his veins. The eyes, of a bluish grey, were small, and a little too near together, but the light in them was the light of an intelligence marvellous in one so young.
Richard, though a wild and reckless fellow, had never been devoid of thought, and in the good days past had dabbled in many a science, and had adopted and abandoned many a creed. He was something of a physiognomist, and he read enough in one glance at this boy’s face to awaken both surprise and interest in him.
“So,” said he, “you are the new boy! Sit down,” he pointed to a little wooden stool near the bed as he spoke. “Sit down, and make yourself at home.”
The boy obeyed, and seated himself firmly by the side of Richard’s pillow; but the stool was so low, and he was so small, that Richard had to change his position to look over the edge of the bed at his new attendant. While Daredevil Dick contemplated him the boy’s small grey eyes peered round the four whitewashed walls, and then fixed themselves upon the barred window with such a look of concentration, that it seemed to Richard as if the little lad must be calculating the thickness and power of resistance of each iron bar with the accuracy of a mathematician.
“What’s your name, my lad?” asked Richard. He had been always beloved by all his inferiors for a manner combining the stately reserve of a great king with the friendly condescension of a popular prince.
“Slosh, sir,” answered the boy, bringing his grey eyes with a great effort away from the iron bars and back to Richard.
“Slosh! A curious name. Your surname, I suppose?”
“Surname and christen name too, sir. Slosh—short for Sloshy.”
“But have you no surname, then?”
“No, sir; fondling, sir.”
“A foundling: dear me, and you are called Sloshy! Why, that is the name of the river that runs through Slopperton.”
“Yes, sir, which I was found in the mud of the river, sir, when I was only three months old, sir.”
“Found in the river—were you? Poor boy—and by whom?”
“By the gent what adopted me, sir.”
“And he is——?” asked Richard.
“A gent connected with the police force, sir; detective——”
This one word worked a sudden change in Richard’s manner. He raised himself on his elbow, looked intently at the boy, and asked, eagerly,—
“This detective, what is his name? But no,” he muttered, “I did not even know the name of that man. Stay—tell me, you know perhaps some of the men in the Slopperton police force besides your adopted father?”
“I knows every man jack of ’em, sir; and a fine staff they is—a credit to their country and a happiness to theirselves.”
“Do you happen to know amongst them a dumb man?” asked Richard.
“Lor’, sir, that’s him.”
“Who?”
“Father, sir. The gent what found me and adopted me. I’ve got a message for you, sir, from father, and I was a-goin’ to give it you, only I thought I’d look about me a little first; but stay—Oh, dear, the gentleman’s took and fainted. Here,” he said, running to the door and calling out in a shrill voice, “come and unlock this here place, will yer, and look alive with that lamp! The gentleman’s gone off into a dead faint, and there ain’t so much as a drop of water to chuck over his face.”
The prisoner had indeed fallen back insensible on the bed. For eight long years he had nourished in his heart a glimmering though dying hope that he might one day receive some token of remembrance from the man who had taken a strange part in the eventful crisis of his life. This ray of light had lately died out, along with every other ray which had once illuminated his dreary life; but in the very moment when hope was abandoned, the token once eagerly looked for came upon him so suddenly, that the shock was too much for his shattered mind and feeble frame.
When Richard recovered from his swoon, he found himself alone with the boy from Slopperton. He was a little startled by the position of that young person, who had seated himself upon the small square deal table by the bed-side, commanding from this elevation a full view of Richard’s face, whereon his two small grey eyes were intently fixed, with that same odd look of concentration with which he had regarded the iron bars.
“Come now,” said he, with the consolatory tone of an experienced sick-nurse; “come now, we mustn’t give way like this, just because we hears from our friends; because, you see, if we does, our friends can’t be no good to us whichever way their intention may be.”
“You said you had a message for me,” said Richard, in feeble but anxious tones.
“Well, it ain’t a long un, and here it is,” answered the young gentleman from his extempore pulpit; and then he continued, with very much the air of giving out a text—“Keep up your pecker.”
“Keep up what?” muttered Richard.
“Your pecker. ‘Keep up your pecker,’ them’s his words; and as he never yet vos known to make a dirty dinner off his own syllables, it ain’t likely as he’ll take and eat ’em. He says to me—on his fingers, in course—‘Tell the gent to keep up his pecker, and leave all the rest to you; for you’re a pocket edition of all the sharpness as ever knives was nothing to, or else say I’ve brought you up for no good whatsomedever.’ ”
This was rather a vague speech; so perhaps it is scarcely strange that Richard did not derive much immediate comfort from it. But, in spite of himself, he did derive a great deal of comfort from the presence of this boy, though he almost despised himself for attaching the least importance to the words of an urchin of little better than eight years of age. Certainly this urchin of eight had a shrewdness of manner which would have been almost remarkable in a man of the world of fifty, and Richard could scarcely help fancying that he must have graduated in some other hemisphere, and been thrown, small as to size, but full grown as to acuteness, into this; or it seemed as if some great strong man had been reduced into the compass of a little boy, in order to make him sharper, as cooks boil down a gallon of gravy to a pint in the manufacture of strong soup.
But, however the boy came to be what he was, there he was, holding forth from his pulpit, and handing Richard the regulation basin of broth which composed his supper.
“Now, what you’ve got to do,” said he, “is to get well; for until you are well, and strong too, there ain’t the least probability of your bein’ able to change your apartments, if you should feel so inclined, which perhaps ain’t likely.”
Richard looked at the diminutive speaker with a wonderment he could not repress.
“Starin’ won’t cure you,” said his juvenile attendant, with friendly disrespect, “not if you took the pattern of my face till you could draw it in the dark. The best thing you can do is to eat your supper, and to-morrow we must try what we can do for you in the way of port wine; for if you ain’t strong and well afore that ere river outside this ere vall goes down, it’s a chance but vot it’ll be a long time afore you sees the outside of the val in question.”
Richard
