"I want some pipes, please--a lot. Don't laugh, Aubrey," said Boodles,
looking down on the tray, with moisture in each eye and a frown on her
forehead. She had no money to spare, poor child, only a threepenny-bit
and four coppers; but she would have parted with the lot to feed the
hungry had not Aubrey taken and restrained her charitable little hand.
"Give him this," he whispered.
"Feed the little dog," said Boodles, as she gave Brightly the coin,
which was half-a-crown, as white and big, it seemed to Brightly, as the
moon itself. Then they went on, while Brightly was left to see visions
and to dream. He called out to tell them they had taken neither pipes
nor tie-clips, but his asthmatic voice was drowned as usual by the
noises of the fair, and it was quite a different set of faces and
figures that went before him. He picked Ju up, tucked her under his arm,
and shuffled away to buy food. He had seen the girl's face with pity on
it through his big glasses, only dimly, but it was enough to show him
what she was; something out of the church window, or out of the big
black book they read from, the book that rested upon the wings of a
golden goose, or perhaps she had come from the wonderful restaurant
called Jerusalem just to show him and Ju there was somewhere or other,
either in Palestine or above Dartmoor, some very superior Duke of
Cornwall who took a kindly interest in worms, himself, and other
creeping things. Brightly stopped, oblivious to holiday-makers, and
tried to think of Boodles' name. He found it just as he reached the
place where he could obtain a royal meal of scraps for threepence.
"Her's a reverent angel, Ju," he whispered.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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