nty's house. Drunkenness,
riot and brawling were the order, there, every night and nearly all night
long. Broken heads were as common as hunger in that place. Yet little
Tom was not unhappy. He had a hard time of it, but did not know it. It
was the sort of time that all the Offal Court boys had, therefore he
supposed it was the correct and comfortable thing. When he came home
empty-handed at night, he knew his father would curse him and thrash him
first, and that when he was done the awful grandmother would do it all
over again and improve on it; and that away in the night his starving
mother would slip to him stealthily with any miserable scrap or crust she
had been able to save for him by going hungry herself, notwithstanding
she was often caught in that sort of treason and soundly beaten for it by
her husband.

No, Tom's life went along well enough, especially in summer. He only
begged just enough to save himself, for the laws against mendicancy were
stringent, and the penalties heavy; so he put in a good deal of his time
listening to good Father Andrew's charming old tales and legends about
giants and fairies, dwarfs and genii, and enchanted castles, and gorgeous
kings and princes. His head grew to be full of these wonderful things,
and many a night as he lay in the dark on his scant and offensive straw,
tired, hungry, and smarting from a thrashing, he unleashed his
imagination and soon forgot his aches and pains in delicious picturings
to himself of the charmed life of a petted prince in a regal palace. One
desire came in time to haunt him day and night: it was to see a real
prince, with his own eyes. He spoke of it once to some of his Offal
Court comrades; but they jeered him and scoffed him so unmercifully that
he was glad to keep his dream to himself after that.

He often read the priest's old books and got him to explain and enlarge
upon them. His dreamings and readings worked certain changes in him,
by-and-by. His dream-people were so fine that he grew to lament his shabby
clothing and his dirt, and to wish to be clean and better clad. He went
on playing in the mud just the same, and enjoying it, too; but, instead
of splashing around in the Thames solely for the fun of it, he began to
find an added value in it because of the washings and cleansings it
afforded.

Tom could always find something going on around the Maypole in Cheapside,
and at the fairs; and now and then he and the rest of London