ce directed attention to his protruding
jaw. He was wearing a blue serge suit which had seen much use.

"You are a sound sleeper, sonny," said the man, grinning at Joe's alarm.
"But when you wake--why you wake up properly; I'll say that for you. You
nearly broke my pipe, you woke up that sudden."

He made this remark with such a malicious grin that Joe, whose face was
still smarting, had no hesitation in connecting his sudden awakening with
the hot bowl of the man's pipe. It was a joke Joe had often seen played
on drunken men in Islington public-houses in his young days.

"You just leave me alone, will you?" he said, rubbing his cheek ruefully.
"It's nothing to do with you whether I'm a sound sleeper or not."

"That's just where you're wrong, young fellow," was the reply. "It's a
lot to do with me. Ain't your name Joe Leaver?"

Joe nodded his head.

"How did you find out?" he asked.

"Perhaps a friend of mine pointed you out to me."

"Perhaps he did, and perhaps he didn't," said Joe. "Anyway, what is
your name?"

"Mr. Kemp is my name, my boy. And unless you're pretty civil I'll give
you cause to remember it."

"What have you got to do with me?" asked the boy in an injured tone.
"I've never done nothing to you."

"You mind your P's and Q's and me and you'll get along all right," said
Mr. Kemp, in a somewhat softer tone. "When you ask me what I've got to do
with you, my answer is I've got a lot to do with you, for I'm your
guardian, so to speak."

Joe looked at Mr. Kemp with a gleam of comprehension in his amazement. He
had had some experience in his Islington days of the strange phenomena
produced by drink.

"Rats!" he retorted rudely. "I've never had a guardian and I don't want
none. What made you a guardian, I'd like to know?"

"Your father did," was the reply.

"Oh, him!" said Joe, in a tone which indicated pronounced antipathy to
his parent. "Do you know him? Are you one of his sort?"

"Now don't try to be insulting, my boy, or I'll take you across my knee.
We won't say nothing about where your father is, because in high society
Wormwood Scrubbs isn't mentioned. All we'll say is that he has been
unfortunate like many another man before him, and that for the present he
can't come and go as he likes. But he has still got a father's heart,
Joe, and there are times when he worries about his family and about there
being no one with them to keep an eye on them and see they grow up a
credit to him. He ha