do they want to lay hands on you for?" George asked.

"Why, for bagging things, in course," Bill replied calmly.

"Bagging things? Do you mean stealing?" George said, greatly shocked.

"Well, not regular prigging," the Shadow replied; "not wipes, yer
know, nor tickers, nor them kind of things. I aint never prigged
nothing of that kind."

"Well, what is it then you do--prig?" George asked, mystified.

"Apples or cabbages, or a bunch of radishes, onions sometimes, or
'taters. That aint regular prigging, you know."

"Well, it seems to me the same sort of thing," George said, after a
pause.

"I tell yer it aint the same sort of thing at all," the Shadow said
angrily. "Everyone as aint a fool knows that taters aint wipes, and no
one can't say as a apple and a ticker are the same."

"No, not the same," George agreed; "but you see one is just as much
stealing as the other."

"No, it aint," the boy reasserted. "One is the same as money and
t'other aint. I am hungry and I nips a apple off a stall. No one aint
the worse for it. You don't suppose as they misses a apple here? Why,
there's wagon-loads of 'em, and lots of 'em is rotten. Well, it aint
no more if I takes one than if it was rotten. Is it now?"

George thought there was a difference, but he did not feel equal to
explaining it.

"The policemen must think differently," he said at last, "else they
wouldn't be always trying to catch you."

"Who cares for the bobbies?" Bill said contemptuously. "I don't; and I
don't want no more jaw with you about it. If yer don't likes it, yer
leaves it. I didn't ask for yer company, did I? So now then."

George had really taken a fancy to the boy, and moreover he saw that
in the event of a quarrel his chance of finding a refuge for the night
was small. In his sense of utter loneliness in the great city he was
loath to break with the only acquaintance he had made.

"I didn't mean to offend you, Bill," he said; "only I was sorry to
hear you say you took things. It seems to me you might get into
trouble; and it would be better after all to work for a living."

"What sort of work?" Bill said derisively. "Who's agoing to give me
work? Does yer think I have only got to walk into a shop and ask for
'ployment? They wouldn't want to know nothing about my character, I
suppose? nor where I had worked before? nor where my feyther lived?
nor nothing? Oh, no, of course not! It's blooming easy to get work
about here; only got to ax for i