“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 eat and a bed to sleep in to-night, and that’s one comfort—­”

Cleek had been watching the boy closely, narrowly, with an ever-deepening interest; now he loosened the grip of his fingers and let his hand drop to his side.

“Suppose I don’t ‘run you in,’ as you put it?  Suppose I take a chance and lend you five shillings, will you do some work and pay it back to me in time?” he asked.

The boy looked up at him and laughed in his face.

“Look ‘ere, Gov’nor, it’s playin’ it low down to lark wiv a chap jist before you’re goin’ to ’ang ’im,” he said.  “You come off your blessed perch.”

“Right,” said Cleek.  “And now you get up on yours and let us see what you’re made of.”  Then he put his hand into his trousers pocket; there was a chink of coins and two half-crowns lay on his outstretched palm.  “There you are—­off with you now, and if you are any good, turn up some time to-night at No. 204, Clarges Street, and ask for Captain Horatio Burbage.  He’ll see that there’s work for you.  Toddle along now and get a meal and a bed.  And mind you keep a close mouth about this.”