h a chap like me as don't know how to read or
write or nothing, and as aint no good anyway. But you will let me go
with yer to Croydon, won't yer?"

"Certainly I will, Bill; but you won't be able to see much of me. I
shall have to get a place like the last. The man I was with said he
would take me back again if I wanted to come, and you know I am all
day in the shop or going out with parcels, and of course you would
have to be busy too at something."

"What sort of thing do yer think, George? I can hold a hoss, but that
aint much for a living. One may go for days without getting a chance."

"I should say, Bill, that your best chance would be to try and get
work either in a brickfield or with a market-gardener. At any rate we
should be able to get a talk for half an hour in the evening. I was
always done at nine o'clock, and if we were both in work we could take
a room together."

Bill shook his head.

"That would be wery nice, but I couldn't have it, George. I knows as I
aint fit company for yer, and if yer was with a shop-keeping bloke he
would think yer was going to run off with the money if he knew yer
kept company with a chap like me. No, the 'greement must be as yer
goes yer ways and I goes mine; but I hopes as yer will find suffin to
do up here, not 'cause as I wouldn't like to go down to this place of
yourn, but because yer have set yer heart on getting work here."

A week later the two boys were out late in Covent Garden trying to
earn a few pence by fetching up cabs and carriages for people coming
out from a concert in the floral hall. George had just succeeded in
earning threepence, and had returned to the entrance to the hall, and
was watching the people come out, and trying to get another job.
Presently a gentleman, with a girl of some nine or ten years old, came
out and took their place on the footpath.

"Can I call you a carriage, sir?" George asked.

"No, thank you, lad, a man has gone for it."

George fell back and stood watching the girl, who was in a white
dress, with a little hood trimmed with swansdown over her head.

Presently his eye fell on something on which the light glittered as it
hung from her neck. Just as he was looking a hand reached over her
shoulder, there was a jerk, and a sudden cry from the child, then a
boy dived into the crowd, and at the same moment George dashed after
him. There was a cry of "Stop, thief!" and several hands made a grab
at George as he dived through the