I see," said I slowly, "you mean--"

"Yes, out with it, that's just wot I do mean--that the low feller
prigged the pup from her, an' I on'y vish as I 'ad a grip of his ugly
nose, and I'd draw it out from his uglier face, I would, like the small
end of a telescope, and then shut it up flat again--so flat that you'd
never know he'd had no nose at all!"

My little sharp-witted companion then willingly gave me an account of
all he knew about the early history of my doggie.

The story was not long, but it began, so to speak, at the beginning.

Punch, or Dumps, as I continued to call him, had been born in a dry
water-butt which stood in a back yard near the Thames. This yard was,
or had been, used for putting away lumber.

"It was a queer place," said my little companion, looking up in my face
with a droll expression--"a sort o' place that, when once you had gone
into it, you was sure to wish you hadn't. Talk o' the blues, sir; I do
assure _you_ that w'en I used to go into that yard of a night it gave me
the black-an'-blues, it did. There was a mouldiness an' a soppiness
about it that beat the katticombs all to sticks. It looked like a place
that some rubbish had bin flung into in the days before Adam an' Eve was
born, an' 'ad been forgotten tee-totally from that time to this. Oh, it
was awful! Used to make my marrow screw up into lumps w'en I was used
to go there."

"But why did you go there at all if you disliked it so much?" I asked.

"Vy? because I 'adn't got no better place to go to. I was used to sleep
there. I slep' in the self-same water-butt where Punch was born.
That's 'ow I come to scrape acquaintance with 'im. I'd bin away from
'ome in the country for a week's slidin'."

"A week's what?"

"Slidin'. Don't you know what sliding on the ice is?"

"Oh!--yes. Are you very fund of that?"

"I should think I was--w'en my boots are good enough to stick on, but
they ain't always that, and then I've got to slide under difficulties.
Sometimes I'm out o' boots an' shoes altogether, in vich case slidin's
impossible; but I can look on and slide in spirit, vich is better than
nuffin'. But, as I was sayin' w'en you 'ad the bad manners to interrupt
me, I 'ad bin away from 'ome for a week--"

"Excuse my interrupting you again, but where is your home, may I ask?"

"You may ask, but it 'ud puzzle me to answer for I ain't got no 'ome,
unless I may say that London is my 'ome. I come an' go where I pleases,
so