"I walked on my ten toes!" cried John; "tramped the whole way from
Browndean; and begged! I would like to see you beg. It's not so easy as
you might suppose. I played it on being a shipwrecked mariner from
Blyth; I don't know where Blyth is, do you? but I thought it sounded
natural. I begged from a little beast of a schoolboy, and he forked out
a bit of twine, and asked me to make a clove hitch; I did, too, I know I
did, but he said it wasn't, he said it was a granny's knot, and I was a
what-d'ye-call-'em, and he would give me in charge. Then I begged from a
naval officer--he never bothered me with knots, but he only gave me a
tract; there's a nice account of the British navy!--and then from a
widow woman that sold lollipops, and I got a hunch of bread from her.
Another party I fell in with said you could generally always get bread;
and the thing to do was to break a plate-glass window and get into gaol;
seemed rather a brilliant scheme.--Pass the beef."

"Why didn't you stay at Browndean?" Morris ventured to inquire.

"Skittles!" said John. "On what? The _Pink Un_ and a measly religious
paper? I had to leave Browndean; I had to, I tell you. I got tick at a
public, and set up to be the Great Vance; so would you, if you were
leading such a beastly existence! And a card stood me a lot of ale and
stuff, and we got swipey, talking about music-halls and the piles of tin
I got for singing; and then they got me on to sing 'Around her splendid
form I weaved the magic circle,' and then he said I couldn't be Vance,
and I stuck to it like grim death I was. It was rot of me to sing, of
course, but I thought I could brazen it out with a set of yokels. It
settled my hash at the public," said John, with a sigh. "And then the
last thing was the carpenter----"

"Our landlord?" inquired Morris.

"That's the party," said John. "He came nosing about the place, and then
wanted to know where the water-butt was, and the bed-clothes. I told him
to go to the devil; so would you too, when there was no possible thing
to say! And then he said I had pawned them, and did I know it was
felony? Then I made a pretty neat stroke. I remembered he was deaf, and
talked a whole lot of rot, very politely, just so low he couldn't hear a
word. 'I don't hear you,' says he. 'I know you don't, my buck, and I
don't mean you to,' says I, smiling away like a haberdasher. 'I'm hard
of hearing,' he roars. 'I'd be in a pretty hot corner if you weren't,'
says I,