made no effort to get away
from the very first. Perhaps he understood the uselessness of it, with
that strong hand gripped on his ragged neckband. Perhaps he was, in his
way, something of a fatalist--London breeds so many among such as he:
starved things that find every boat chained, every effort thrust back
upon them unrewarded. At any rate, from the moment he had heard the girl
give to this man a name which every soul in England had heard at one
time or another during the past two years, he had gone into a sort of
mild collapse, as though realising the utter uselessness of battling
against fate, and had given himself up to what was to be.

"Hello," said Cleek, as he looked the youth over. "Yours is a face I
don't remember running foul of before, my young beauty. Where did you
come from?"

"Where I seem like to be goin' now you've got your currant-pickers on
me--Hell," answered the boy, with something like a sigh of despair.
"Leastways, I been in Hell ever since I can remember anyfink, so I
reckon I must have come from there."

"What's your name?"

"Dollops. S'pose I must a had another sometime, but I never heard of it.
Wot's that? Yuss--most nineteen. _Wot?_ Oh, go throw summink at
yourself! I aren't too young to be 'ungry, am I? And where's a cove
goin' to _find_ this 'ere 'honest work' you're a-talkin' of? I'm fair
sick of the gime of lookin' for it. Besides, you don't see parties as
goes in for the other thing walkin' round with ribs on 'em like
bed-slats, and not even the price of a cup of corfy in their pockets, do
you? No fear! I wouldn't've 'urt the young lydie; but I tell you strite,
I'd a took every blessed farthin' she 'ad on her if you 'adn't've
dropped on me like this."

"Got down to the last ditch--down to the point of desperation, eh?"

"Yuss. So would you if you 'ad a fing inside you tearin' and tearin'
like I 'ave. Aren't et a bloomin' crumb since the day before yusterday
at four in the mawnin' when a gent in an 'ansom--drunk as a lord, he
was--treated me and a parcel of others to a bun and a cup of corfy at a
corfy stall over 'Ighgate way. Stood out agin bein' a crook as long as
ever I could--as long as ever I'm goin' to, I reckon, now _you've_ got
your maulers on me. I'll be on the list after this. The cops 'ull know
me; and when you've got the nime--well, wot's the odds? You might as
well 'ave the gime as well, and git over goin' empty. All right, run me
in, sir. Any'ow, I'll 'ave a bit to ea