Boys -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Slums -- Fiction
As soon as he appeared in Luck Row he was told that his father had been
'smugged.' Indeed the tidings had filled the Jago within ten minutes.
Josh Perrott was walking quietly along Meakin Street,--so went the
news,--when up comes Snuffy and another split, and smugs him. Josh had a
go for Weech's door, to cut his lucky out at the back, but was caught.
That was a smart notion of Josh's, the Jago opinion ran, to get through
Weech's and out into the courts behind. But it was no go.
Hannah Perrott sat in her room, inert and lamenting. Dicky could not
rouse her, and at last he went off by himself to reconnoitre about
Commercial Street Police Station, and pick up what information he might;
while a gossip or two came and took Mrs Perrott for consolation to
Mother Gapp's. Little Em, unwashed, tangled and weeping, could well take
care of herself and the room, being more than two years old.
Josh Perrott would be brought up to-morrow, Dicky ascertained, at the
North London Police Court. So the next morning found Dicky trudging
moodily along the two miles of flags to Stoke Newington Road; while his
mother and three sympathising friends, who foresaw an opportunity for
numerous tiny drops with interesting circumstances to flavour them, took
a penny cast on the way in a tramcar.
Dicky, with some doubt as to the disposition of the door-keeping
policeman toward ragged boys, waited for the four women, and contrived
to pass in unobserved among them. Several Jagos were in the court,
interested not only in Josh's adventure, but in one of Cocko Harnwell's,
who had indulged, the night before, in an animated little scramble with
three policemen in Dalston; and they waited with sympathetic interest
while the luck was settled of a long string of drunk-and-disorderlies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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