Boys -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Slums -- Fiction
He strolled out into the street, to survey the Jago. In the bulk it was
little changed, though the County Council had made a difference in the
north-east corner, and was creeping farther and farther still. The
dispossessed Jagos had gone to infect the neighbourhoods across the
border, and to crowd the people a little closer. They did not return to
live in the new barrack-buildings; which was a strange thing, for the
County Council was charging very little more than double the rents which
the landlords of the Old Jago had charged. And so another Jago, teeming
and villainous as the one displaced, was slowly growing, in the form of
a ring, round about the great yellow houses. But the new church and its
attendant buildings most took Josh's notice. They were little more than
begun when last he walked Old Jago Street in daylight, and now they
stood, large and healthy amid the dens about them, a wonder and a pride.
As he looked, Jerry Gullen and Bill Rann passed.
'Wayo, brother-in-law!' sang out Bill Rann, who remembered the Old
Bailey fiction of four years back, and thought it a capital joke.
'Nice sort o' thing, ain't it?' said Jerry Gullen with indignant
sarcasm, jerking his thumb toward the new church. 'The street's clean
ruined. Wot's the good o' livin' 'ere now? Wy, a man mustn't even do a
click, blimy!'
'An' doncher?' asked Josh with a grin. Hereat another grin broke wide on
Jerry Gullen's face, and he went his way with a wink and a whistle.
'And so you're back again, Josh Perrott!' said old Beveridge, seedier
than ever, with the 'Hard Up' fresh chalked on the changeless hat. 'Back
again! Pity you couldn't stay there, isn't it? Pity we can't all stay
there.'
Josh looked after the gaunt old figure with much doubt and a vague
indignation: for such a view was foreign to his understanding. And as he
looked Father Sturt came out of the church, and laid his hand on Josh's
shoulder.
'What!' exclaimed the vicar, 'home again without coming to see me! But
there, you must have been coming. I hope you haven't been knocking long?
Come in now, at any rate. You're looking wonderfully well. What a
capital thing a holiday is, isn't it--a good long one?' Taking Josh by
the arm he hauled him, grinning, sheepish and almost blushing, toward
the club door. And at that moment Sam Cash came hurrying round Luck Row
corner, with his finger through a string, and on that string a bunch of
grouse.
'Dear me,' said Father Sturt, turning back, but without releasing Josh's
arm. 'Here's our dear friend, Sam Cash, taking home something for his
lunch. Come, Sam, with such a fine lot of birds as that, I'm sure you'll
be proud to tell us where they came from. Eh?'
For a moment Sam Cash was a trifle puzzled, even offended. Then there
fell over his face the mask of utter inexpression which the vicar had
learned to know. Said Sam Cash, stolidly: 'I bin 'avin' a little
shootin' with a friend.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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