that was
how Michael looked at it. He who knows the traditions of the class this
boy was born in will understand and excuse the feeling.

Michael was--said his _entourage_--that sharp at twelve that he could
understand a'most anything. He had certainly understood that the man
whom he saw in the grip of the police-officer overturned in the Thames
was wanted by Scotland Yard, to pay an old score, with possible
additions to it due to that officer's death. He had understood, too,
that the attempt to capture the man had been treacherous according to
his ideas of fair play, while he had no information about his original
crime. He did not like his looks, certainly, but then looks warn't much
to go by. His conclusion was--silence for the present, without prejudice
to future speech if applied for. When that time came, he would tell no
more lies than were wanted.

CHAPTER XIV

OF A VISIT MICHAEL PAID HIS AUNT, AND OF A FISH HE NEARLY CAUGHT.
THE PIGEONS, NEXT DOOR, AND A PINT OF HALF-AND-HALF. MISS JULIA
HAWKINS AND HER PARALYTIC FATHER. HOW A MAN IN THE BAR BROKE HIS
PIPE. OF A VISIT MICHAEL'S GREAT-AUNT PAID MISS HAWKINS. TWO
STRANGE POLICEMEN. HOW MR. DAVERILL MIGHT HAVE ESCAPED HAD HE NOT
BEEN A SMOKER. A MIRACULOUS RECOVERY, SPOILED BY A STRAIGHT SHOT

Michael Ragstroar's mysterious attraction to his great-aunt at
Hammersmith was not discountenanced or neutralised by his family in
Sapps Court, but rather the reverse: in fact, his visits to her
received as much indirect encouragement as his parents considered might
be safely given without rousing his natural combativeness, and
predisposing him against the ounce of influence which she alone
exercised over his rebellious instincts. Any suspicion of moral culture
might have been fatal, holy influences of every sort being eschewed by
Michael on principle.

So when Michael's mother, some weeks later than the foregoing incident,
remarked that it was getting on for time that her branch of the family
should send a quartern of shelled peas and two pound of cooking-cherries
to Aunt Elizabeth Jane as a seasonable gift, her lord and master had
replied that he wasn't going within eleven mile of Hammersmith till
to-morrow fortnight, but that he would entrust peas and cherries, as
specified, to "Old Saturday Night," a fellow-coster, so named in
derision of his adoption of teetotalism, his name being really Knight.
He was also called Temperance Tom