Part 3 (1/2)
”I don't want to live like a jintleman,” he said; ”I want to work honest, and git wage.”
”Why did yer cut and run then?” said his companion suddenly and sharply.
”Did they wallop yer?”
Frank started. How could this strange boy possibly know that he had run away? His alarmed face seemed to afford the tramp the keenest amus.e.m.e.nt; he laughed long and loud, leaning back on the steps in an ecstasy, and said at breathless intervals:
”You're just the innocentest, greenest little chap. How old are yer?”
Frank did not answer; he was considering the best means of getting away from this undesirable acquaintance, who presently, wiping his eyes with the cuff of his jacket, remarked with recovered gravity:
”In course, yer know, no one 'ull take a boy what's run away.”
This was a new and alarming idea to Frank.
”_Won't_ they?” he said earnestly.
”Certingly not,” continued the tramp. ”Where's yer carikter? You 'ain't got none.”
Frank hung his head. He wondered he had not thought of this before.
”This is where it lies,” pursued his companion, holding out a very dirty hand dramatically in front of him. ”You comes, as it might be, to me and you says, 'I want a sitivation.' Then I says, 'Where's yer carikter?' Then you says, 'I 'ain't got one.' Then I says, 'Out yer go.'”
Having thus placed the situation in a nutsh.e.l.l, as it were, he put his hands in his pockets and observed Frank covertly out of the corners of his eyes. Seeing how crestfallen he looked, the tramp presently spoke again.
”Now, in my line of bizness it's not so important a carikter isn't. I might very likely look over it in takin' a pal if he asked me. In course it would be a favour; but still I might look over it.”
”Do you want a pal?” asked Frank, pushed to extremity.
”Well, I don't, not to say _want_ a pal,” replied the tramp, ”but I don't mind stretching a pint in your case if you like to jine.”
The blue eyes and the glittering black ones met for an instant.
”I'll jine yer,” said Frank with a sigh.
The tramp held out his long-fingered brown hand.
”Shake hands,” he said. ”The terms is, halves all we git.”
The bargain concluded, he informed Frank that his name was Barney, and further introduced him to the mice, called respectively Jumbo, Alice, and Lord Beaconsfield.
This last, a mouse of weak-eyed and feeble appearance, he took out of the cage and allowed to crawl over him, stroking it tenderly now and then with the tip of his finger.
”He's an artful one, he is,” he murmured admiringly. ”I calls him Dizzy for short. What's your name, little un?”
”Frank.”
”That sounds a good sort o' name too,” said Barney; ”sort o' name you see in gowld letters on a chany mug in the shop winders, don't it? I don't fancy, though, I could bring my tongue to it, not as a _jineral_ thing. I shall call yer 'Nipper,' if you don't mind. After a friend o'
mine.”
The new name appearing rather an advantage than otherwise under his present circ.u.mstances Frank agreed to drop his own, and to be henceforth known only as the ”Nipper.” This change seemed to have broken the last link which bound him to Green Highlands and his own people. He was Frank Darvell no longer; he belonged to no one; the wide world was his home; Barney and the white mice his only friends and companions.