he said sharply, knowing that only birth or death brought a
doctor here.

Watching the doctor's ascent, the two boys strained their necks over the
rickety banisters, which had been polished black by trousers of the
past, and sometimes they lost him, and then they saw his legs again.

"Hello, it's your old woman!" cried Shovel. "Is she a deader?" he asked,
brightening, for funerals made a pleasant stir on the stair.

The question had no meaning for bewildered Tommy, but he saw that if his
mother was a deader, whatever that might be, he had grown great in his
companion's eye. So he hoped she was a deader.

"If it's only a kid," Shovel began, with such scorn that Tommy at once
screamed, "It ain't!" and, cross-examined, he swore eagerly that his
mother was in bed when he left her in the morning, that she was still in
bed at dinner-time, also that the sheet was over her face, also that she
was cold.

Then she was a deader and had attained distinction in the only way
possible in that street. Shovel did not shake Tommy's hand warmly, the
forms of congratulation varying in different parts of London, but he
looked his admiration so plainly that Tommy's head waggled proudly.
Evidently, whatever his mother had done redounded to his glory as well
as to hers, and somehow he had become a boy of mark. He said from his
elevation that he hoped Shovel would believe his tales about Thrums now,
and Shovel, who had often cuffed Tommy for sticking to him so closely,
cringed in the most snobbish manner, craving permission to be seen in
his company for the next three days. Tommy, the upstart, did not see his
way to grant this favor for nothing, and Shovel offered a knife, but did
not have it with him; it was his sister Ameliar's knife, and he would
take it from her, help his davy. Tommy would wait there till Shovel
fetched it. Shovel, baffled, wanted to know what Tommy was putting on
hairs for. Tommy smiled, and asked whose mother was a deader. Then
Shovel collapsed, and his wind passed into Tommy.

The reign of Thomas Sandys, nevertheless, was among the shortest, for
with this question was he overthrown: "How did yer know she were cold?"

"Because," replied Tommy, triumphantly, "she tell me herself."

Shovel only looked at him, but one eye can be so much more terrible than
two, that plop, plop, plop came the balloon softly down the steps of the
throne and at the foot shrank pitifully, as if with Ameliar's knife in
it.

"It's only a