t was while sitting broom in hand, under the
lamp-post at one end of his crossing that he first saw Lawrence Granby,
and if he had never seen Lawrence Granby I should not be writing about
him at all.

It was a winter's morning in 1869, bright as it is possible for such a
morning to be in London, but piercingly cold, and Wikkey had brushed and
re-brushed the pathway--which scarcely needed it, the east wind having
already done half the work--just to put some feeling of warmth into his
thin frame before seating himself in his usual place beneath the
lamp-post. There were a good many passers-by, for it was the time of day
at which clerks and business men are on their way to their early
occupation, and the boy scanned each face in the fashion that had become
habitual to him in his life-long look out for coppers. Presently he saw
approaching a peculiarly tall figure, and looked at it curiously,
tracing its height upward from his own stunted point of view till he
encountered the cheery glance of Lawrence Granby. Wikkey was strangely
fascinated by the blue eyes looking down from so far above him, and
scarcely knowing what he did, he rose and went shambling on alongside of
the young man, his eyes riveted on his face. Lawrence, however, being
almost unconscious of the boy's presence till his attention was drawn to
him by the friend with whom he was walking, who said, laughing and
pointing to Wikkey, "Friend of yours, eh? Seems to know you." Then he
looked down again and met the curious, intent stare fixed upon him.

"Well, small boy! I hope you'll know me again," he said.

To which Wikkey promptly returned in the shrill, aggressively aggrieved
voice of the London Arab: "I reckon it don't do you no harm, guvner; a
cat may look at a king."

Lawrence laughed, and threw him a copper, saying, "You are a cheeky
little fellow," and went on his way.

Wikkey stood looking after him, and then picked up the penny, holding it
between his cold hands, as though it possessed some warming properties,
and muttering: "It seems fur to warm a chap to look at him;" and then he
sat down once more, still pondering over the apparition that had so
fascinated him. Oddly enough the imputation of cheekiness rankled in his
mind in a most unusual fashion--not that Wikkey entertained the faintest
objection to "cheek" in the abstract, and there were occasions on which
any backwardness in its use would betray a certain meanness of spirit:
for instance to th