Transcribed from the 1899 Bernhard Tauchnitz edition by LesBowler.
TAUCHNITZ EDITION.
By the same Author,
TALES OF MEAN STREETS | 1 vol. |
A CHILD OF THE JAGO | 1 vol. |
TO LONDON TOWN
BY
ARTHUR MORRISON,
AUTHOR OF “A CHILD OF THEJAGO,” ETC. ETC.
COPYRIGHT EDITION.
LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1899.
p.7NOTE.
I designed this story, and, indeed, began to write it, betweenthe publication of Tales of Mean Streets and that of AChild of the Jago, to be read together with those books: notthat I pretend to figure in all three—much less in any oneof them—a complete picture of life in the eastern parts ofLondon, but because they are complementary, each to the twoothers.
A. M.
p. 9TOLONDON TOWN.
I.
The afternoon had slumbered in thesun, but now the August air freshened with an awakening breath,and Epping Thicks stirred and whispered through a myriadleaves. Far away beyond the heaving greenwoods distantclouds floated flat on the upper air, and a richer gold grew overthe hills as the day went westward. This way and that,between and about trees and undergrowth, an indistinct path wentstraggling by easy grades to the lower ground by Wormleyton Pits;an errant path whose every bend gave choice of green passestoward banks of heather and bracken. It was by this waythat an old man and a crippled child had reached the Pits. He was a small old man, white-haired, and a trifle bent; but hewent his way with a sturdy tread, satchel at side andbutterfly-net in hand. As for the child, she too wentsturdily enough, but she hung from a crutch by the rightshoulder, and she moved with a p. 10jog and a swing. The hand thatgripped the crutch gripped also a little bunch of meadowsweet,and the other clasped tight against her pinafore a tattered oldbook that would else have fallen to pieces.
Once on the heathery slade, the old man lifted the strap overhis head and put the satchel down by a tree clump at thewood’s edge.
“’Nother rest for you, Bess,” he said, as heknelt to open his bag. “I’m goin’ overthe pits pretty close to-day.” He packed his pocketswith pill-boxes, a poison bottle, and a battered, flat tin case;while the child, with a quick rejection of the crutch, sat andwatched.
The old man stood, slapped one pocket after another, and then,with a playful sweep of the net-gauze across the child’sface, tramped off among the heather. “Good luck,gran’dad!” she cried after him, and settled on herelbow to read.
The book needed a careful separation, being open at back as at