Several gentlemen in evening dress stood framed in the lighted doorway, shouting: “Have your tickets in your hands and give them up as you pass in.” They were fine fellows, helping in a splendid work, and their society did much good, though it was not so well organized as others that have followed in its steps; but Shovel, you may believe, was in no mood to attend to them. He had but one thought: that the traitor Tommy was doubtless at that moment boring his way toward them, underground, as it were, and “holding his ticket in his hand.” Shovel dived into the rabble and was flung back upside down. Falling with his arms round a full-grown man, he immediately ran up him as if he had been a lamp-post, and was aloft just sufficiently long to see Tommy give up the ticket and saunter into the hall.
The crowd tried at intervals to rush the door. It was mainly composed of ragged boys, but here and there were men, women, and girls, who came into view for a moment under the lights as the mob heaved and went round and round like a boiling potful. Two policemen joined the ticket-collectors, and though it was a good-humored gathering, the air was thick with such cries as these:
“I lorst my ticket, ain’t I telling yer? Gar on, guv’nor, lemme in!”
“Oh, crumpets, look at Jimmy! Jimmy never done nothink, your honor; he’s a himposter"’
“I’m the boy what kicked the peeler. Hie, you toff with the choker, ain’t I to step up?”
“Tell yer, I’m a genooine criminal, I am. If yer don’t lemme in I’ll have the lawr on you.”
“Let a poor cove in as his father drownded hisself for his country.”
“What air yer torking about? Warn’t I in larst year, and the cuss as runs the show, he says to me, ‘Allers welcome,’ he says. None on your sarse, Bobby. I demands to see the cuss what runs—”
“Jest keeping on me out ‘cos I ain’t done nothin’. Ho, this is a encouragement to honesty, I don’t think.”
Mighty in tongue and knee and elbow was an unknown knight, ever conspicuous; it might be but by a leg waving for one brief moment in the air. He did not want to go in, would not go in though they went on their blooming knees to him; he was after a viper of the name of Tommy. Half an hour had not tired him, and he was leading another assault, when a magnificent lady, such as you see in wax-works, appeared in the vestibule and made some remark to a policeman, who then shouted:
“If so there be hany lad here called Shovel, he can step forrard.”
A dozen lads stepped forward at once, but a flail drove them right and left, and the unknown knight had mounted the parapet amid a shower of execrations. “If you are the real Shovel,” the lady said to him, “you can tell me how this proceeds, ’I love my dear father and my dear mother—’ Go on.”
Shovel obeyed, tremblingly. “And all the dear little kids at ’ome. You are a kind laidy or gentleman. I love yer. I will never do it again, so help me bob. Amen.”