Boys -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Slums -- Fiction
So that eight o'clock that evening at Perrotts' witnessed a darkening
room wherein an inconsiderable little corpse lay on a bed; while a small
ragamuffin spread upon it with outstretched arms, exhausted with
sobbing, a soak of muddy tears:--'O Looey, Looey! Can't you 'ear? Won't
you never come to me no more?'
And the Reverend Henry Sturt, walking from church through Luck Row
toward his lodgings in Kingsland Road, heard shouts and riot behind the
grimy panes of Mother Gapp's, and in the midst the roar of many voices
joined in the Jago chant:--
_Six bloomin' long months in a prison, Six more bloomin' months I must
stay, For meetin' a bloke in our alley, An' takin' 'is uxter away!_
_Toora-li--toora-li--looral, Toora-li--toora-li--lay, A-coshin' a bloke
in our alley, An' takin' 'is uxter away!_
XIV
On an autumn day four years after his first coming to the Jago, the
Reverend Henry Sturt left a solicitor's office in Cheapside, and walked
eastward, with something more of hope and triumph in him than he had
felt since the Jago fell to his charge. For the ground was bought
whereon should be built a church and buildings accessory, and he felt,
not that he was like to see any great result from his struggle, but that
perhaps he might pursue it better armed and with less of grim despair
than had been his portion hitherto.
It had taken him four years to gather the money for the site, and some
of it he was paying from his own pocket. He was unmarried, and had
therefore no reason to save. Still, he must be careful, for the sake of
the parish: the church must be built, and some of the money would
probably be wanted for that. Moreover, there were other calls. The
benefice brought a trifle less than L200 a year, and out of that, so far
as it would go, he paid (with some small outside help) L130 for rent of
the temporary church and the adjacent rooms; the organist's salary; the
rates and the gas-bills; the cost of cleaning, care, and repair; the
sums needed for such relief as was impossible to be withheld; and a
thousand small things beside. While the Jagos speculated wildly among
themselves as to the vast sums he must make by his job. For what toff
would come and live in the Jago except for a consideration of solid
gain? What other possible motive could there be, indeed?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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