longing for the dreadful pork-pies and other deadly inventions displayed
there--for to him these were dainties fit for the angels; that is,
judging by the smell, they were--for it had never been his good luck to
own and eat one. There was a cold drizzle of rain; the atmosphere was
murky; it was a melancholy day. At night Tom reached home so wet and
tired and hungry that it was not possible for his father and grandmother
to observe his forlorn condition and not be moved--after their fashion;
wherefore they gave him a brisk cuffing at once and sent him to bed. For
a long time his pain and hunger, and the swearing and fighting going on
in the building, kept him awake; but at last his thoughts drifted away to
far, romantic lands, and he fell asleep in the company of jewelled and
gilded princelings who live in vast palaces, and had servants salaaming
before them or flying to execute their orders. And then, as usual, he
dreamed that HE was a princeling himself.

All night long the glories of his royal estate shone upon him; he moved
among great lords and ladies, in a blaze of light, breathing perfumes,
drinking in delicious music, and answering the reverent obeisances of the
glittering throng as it parted to make way for him, with here a smile,
and there a nod of his princely head.

And when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about
him, his dream had had its usual effect--it had intensified the
sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold. Then came bitterness, and
heart-break, and tears.

Chapter III. Tom's meeting with the Prince.

Tom got up hungry, and sauntered hungry away, but with his thoughts busy
with the shadowy splendours of his night's dreams. He wandered here and
there in the city, hardly noticing where he was going, or what was
happening around him. People jostled him, and some gave him rough
speech; but it was all lost on the musing boy. By-and-by he found
himself at Temple Bar, the farthest from home he had ever travelled in
that direction. He stopped and considered a moment, then fell into his
imaginings again, and passed on outside the walls of London. The Strand
had ceased to be a country-road then, and regarded itself as a street,
but by a strained construction; for, though there was a tolerably compact
row of houses on one side of it, there were only some scattered great
buildings on the other, these being palaces of rich nobles, with ample
and beautiful grounds stret