Boys -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Slums -- Fiction
He tried farther south, in Norton Folgate. There was a shop of cheap
second-hand miscellanies: saddles, razors, straps, dumbbells, pistols,
boxing gloves, trunks, bags, and billiard-balls. Many of the things hung
about the door-posts in bunches, and within all was black, as in a cave.
At one door-post was a pistol. Nothing could be more interesting than a
pistol--indeed it was altogether a better possession than a clock; and
it was a small, handy sort of thing. Probably the Ropers would be
delighted with a pistol. He stood and regarded it with much interest.
There were difficulties. In the first place it was beyond his reach; and
in the second, it hung by the trigger-guard on a stout cord. Just then,
glancing within the shop, he perceived a pair of fiery eyes regarding
him, panther-like, from the inner gloom; and he hastily resumed his
walk, as the Jew shop-keeper reached the door, and watched him safely
away.
Now he came to Bishopsgate Street, and here at last he chose the gift.
It was at a toy-shop: a fine, flaming toy-shop, with carts, dolls, and
hoops dangling above, and wooden horses standing below, guarding two
baskets by the door. One contained a mixed assortment of tops, whips,
boats, and woolly dogs; the other was lavishly filled with shining,
round metal boxes, nobly decorated with coloured pictures, each box with
a little cranked handle. As he looked, a tune, delightfully tinkled on
some instrument, was heard from within the shop. Dicky peeped. There was
a lady, with a little girl at her side who was looking eagerly at just
such a shining, round box in the saleswoman's hands, and it was from
that box, as the saleswoman turned the handle, that the tune came. Dicky
was enchanted. This--this was the thing, beyond debate: a pretty little
box that would play music whenever you turned a handle. This was a thing
worth any fifty clocks. Indeed it was almost as good as a regular
barrel-organ, the first thing he would buy if he were rich.
There was a shop-boy in charge of the goods outside the window, and his
eyes were on Dicky. So Dicky whistled absently, and strolled carelessly
along. He swung behind a large waggon, crossed the road, and sought a
convenient doorstep; for his mind was made up, and his business was now
to sit down before the toy-shop, and wait his opportunity.
A shop had been boarded up after a fire, and from its doorstep one could
command a perfect view of the toy-shop across the broad thoroughfare
with its crowded traffic--could sit, moreover, safe from interference.
Here he took his seat, secure from the notice of the guardian shop-boy,
whose attention was given to passengers on his own side. The little
girl, gripping the new toy in her hand, came out at her mother's side
and trotted off. For a moment Dicky reflected that the box could be
easily snatched. But after all the little girl had but one: whereas the
shopwoman had many, and at best could play on no more than one at a
time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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