o venture too far into the slums that lay hidden behind St. George's
Church and the Elephant, he might have difficulty in finding a place
where he could take a meal in comfort. He stood for a few moments
outside the window of a shop in which sausages and steaks and onions
were being fried. There was a thick, hot, steamy odour coming from the
door that filled him with nausea, and he turned to move away, but as he
did so, he saw two sickly boys, half naked, standing against the window
with their mouths pressed close to the glass. They were eyeing the
cooking food so hungrily that he felt pity for them, and he touched one
of them on the shoulder and asked him if he would like something to eat.
The boy looked at him, but did not answer, and his companion came
shuffling to his side and eyed him too.

"Wouldn't you like some of that ... that stuff!" Henry said, pointing to
a great slab of thick pudding, padded with currants.

One of the boys nodded his head, and Henry moved towards the door of the
shop, bidding them both to follow him.

"Give these youngsters some of that pudding!" he said to the man behind
the counter: a fat, flaccid man with a wet, steamy brow which he
periodically wiped with a grimy towel.

"'Ere!" said the man, cutting off large pieces of the pudding and
passing it across the counter to the boys who took it, without speaking,
and began to gnaw at it immediately.

"Wod you say for it, eih?" the man demanded.

They mumbled unintelligibly, their mouths choked with the food.

"Pore little kids, they don't know no better! Nah, then, 'op it, you
two! That'll be fourpence, sir!"

Henry paid for the pudding and left the malodorous shop. The children
were standing in the shadow outside, one of them eating wolfishly, while
the other held the pudding in front of him, gaping at it....

"Don't you like it?" Henry said, bending down to him.

"'E can't eat it, guv'nor!" the other boy said.

"Can't eat it?"

"No, guv'nor, 'e can't. I'll 'ave to eat it for 'im...."

"But why can't you eat?" Henry asked, turning to the boy who still gaped
helplessly at the pudding.

The child did not answer. He stared at the pudding, and then he stared
at Henry, and as he did so, the pudding fell from his hands, and he
became sick....

"'Ere, wod you chuckin' it awy for?" the other boy said, dropping
quickly to the ground and picking up the pudding.

"He's ill," Henry said helplessly.

"'E's always ill," the boy answer