a shirt for the day and a shirt for the night!

"Do you mean that you will dispute possession of it with me, _vi et
armis_?"

"Yes, Sir," said I, confused.

He laughed, clapped me on the shoulder, called me David, Jack the
Giant-Killer, and bade me deliver the washing-book. I fumbled in the
pocket of my torn jacket and handed him a greasy, dog's-eared mass of
paper. As soon as his eyes fell on it, I realised my mistake, and
produced the washing book from the other pocket.

"I've given you the wrong one, Sir," said I, reaching for the treasure I
had surrendered.

But he threw himself on his bed and dived his legs beneath the clothes.

"Wonderful!" he cried. "He is four foot nothing, he looks like a yard of
pack-thread, he would fight me for an ill-washed shirt and a pair of
holes with bits of sock round them, and he reads 'Paradise Lost'!"

He made a gesture of throwing the disreputable epic at my head, and I
curved my arm in an attitude only too familiarly defensive.

"I found it in a bundle of washing, Sir," I cried apologetically.

At home reading was the unforgivable sin. Had my mother discovered me
poring over the half intelligible but wholly fascinating story of Adam
and Eve and the Devil, she would have beaten me with the first implement
to her hand. I had a moment's terror lest the possession of a work of
literature should be so horrible a crime that even Paragot would
chastise me.

To my consternation he thrust the tattered thing--it was an antiquated
sixpenny edition--under my nose and commanded me to read.

"'Of Man's first disobedience'--Go on. If you can read it intelligently
I'll pay your mother. If you can't I'll write to her politely to say
that I resent having my washing sent home by persons of no education."

I began in great fear, but having, I suppose, an instinctive
appreciation of letters, I mouthed the rolling lines not too brokenly.

"What's a Heavenly Muse?" asked Paragot, as soon as I paused. I had not
the faintest idea.

"Do you think it's a Paradisiacal back yard where they keep the Horse of
the Apocalypse?"

I caught a twinkle in the blue eyes which he bent fiercely upon me.

"If you please, Sir," said I, "I think it is the Bird of Paradise."

Then we both laughed; and Paragot bidding me sit on the wreck of a
cane-bottomed chair, gave me my first lesson in Greek Mythology. He
talked for nearly an hour, and I, ragged urchin of the London streets,
my wits sharpened by hunger