He made up his mind that he would not go through with it another year, and about July he began to make love to the cook's mother, taking her a mackerel or so that he had stolen on purpose for her and laying it at her feet. The cook's mother was pleased with him, and, as he had calculated, offered to borrow him for a month and see what he could do with the rats down at her place, down at Limehouse Pier, or something like that, and he said we would hardly believe it, but he got far more to eat while he was there than at home. The poor are much more lavish than the rich, and live so much better. And he saw life! 'My word!' he would say, licking his whiskers, which were fine and large, and his only beauty. He said they were of immense use to him in showing what sized gaps he could get through, for if his whiskers were at all incommoded, he at once knew that the hole or gap was too small for the thickest part of him. Such tight places he had been in. He would lift up his head and yawn and say: 'The things I have seen, ma'am, you would not believe!' Then mother would kindly ask him to spare our youth, and not tell us all the dreadful things that he had seen and heard in the slums, for it would not have been nice. He might tell her when they were alone, but as they seldom were alone I don't think he ever got the chance, though he was dying to shock her, because she was so shockable. And then the old woman died, and a rent-collecting lady, who had been kind to her when she couldn't pay her rent and paid it for her herself, took Charlie away with her when all the sticks were sold--there was only a table and a chair, as far as I can remember, when she had pawned everything--and gave him to a little boy who was her nephew. It happened to be a little boy in Egerton Gardens where we lived. Funny, how small the world is! That boy was rough and played experiments with him, and catapulted him, and tied things to him, and harnessed him, and put him to bed in his sister's doll's nightgowns in the day-time. That was disagreeable, Charlie said, but he never bit him, and he was glad afterwards, for the little boy got ill. [Illustration: THAT BOY WAS ROUGH AND PLAYED EXPERIMENTS WITH HIM.] He was put to bed, and he came out all in red spots, and he simply yelled for his black cat. The nurse took Charlie up and put him on the bed, and the little boy grabbed him and held him very uncomfortably for a long time till he got tired. He was a very clever little boy, and when his mother said to him, 'But, Teddy, you will give the poor cat your measles,' he answered, 'He can be _defected_ same as me, can't he?' 'They don't disinfect _you_, my boy, only your clothes,' the mother said. 'And that is so that your clothes may not give it to any one else.'