king
itself at home on the bottom step; resting, doubtless, before it came
hopping up. Another dozen steps, and--It was beautifully dressed in one
piece of yellow and brown that reached almost to its feet, with a bit
left at the top to form a hood, out of which its pert face peeped
impudently; oho, so they came in their Sunday clothes. He drew so near
that he could hear it cooing: thought itself as good as upstairs, did
it!

He bounced upon her sharply, thinking to carry all with a high hand.
"Out you go!" he cried, with the action of one heaving coals.

She whisked round, and, "Oo boy or oo girl?" she inquired, puzzled by
his dress.

"None of your cheek!" roared insulted manhood.

"Oo boy," she said, decisively.

With the effrontery of them when they are young, she made room for him
on her step, but he declined the invitation, knowing that her design was
to skip up the stair the moment he was off his guard.

"You don't needn't think as we'll have you," he announced, firmly. "You
had best go away to--go to--" His imagination failed him. "You had best
go back," he said.

She did not budge, however, and his next attempt was craftier. "My
mother," he assured her, "ain't living here now;" but mother was a new
word to the girl, and she asked gleefully, "Oo have mother?" expecting
him to produce it from his pocket. To coax him to give her a sight of it
she said, plaintively, "Me no have mother."

"You won't not get mine," replied Tommy doggedly.

She pretended not to understand what was troubling him, and it passed
through his head that she had to wait there till the doctor came down
for her. He might come at any moment.

A boy does not put his hand into his pocket until every other means of
gaining his end has failed, but to that extremity had Tommy now come.
For months his only splendid possession had been a penny despised by
trade because of a large round hole in it, as if (to quote Shovel) some
previous owner had cut a farthing out of it. To tell the escapades of
this penny (there are no adventurers like coin of the realm) would be
one way of exhibiting Tommy to the curious, but it would be a
hard-hearted way. At present the penny was doubly dear to him, having
been long lost and lately found. In a noble moment he had dropped it
into a charity box hanging forlorn against the wall of a shop, where it
lay very lonely by itself, so that when Tommy was that way he could hear
it respond if he shook the box, as acq