"He's rough, o' course," whispered Mr. Elijah Hendren to the Foreman Shunter, "but he means it about the parrot. That's the kind o' man he is, although, mind you, I don't say he's polished." Whatever doubts might have been entertained for the future of Henry Harper, the parrot somehow seemed to soften them. Even Mother felt that to express misgiving after that would be in bad taste. Mr. Thompson promised that he would see the old man in the course of the morrow, as the _Margaret Carey_ had to sail on Friday, but he had no doubt it would be all right as they never minded a boy or two. And then the Foreman Shunter sent Johnnie to the end of the street for a quartern of rum, as there was only beer in the house, and that mild beverage was not the slightest use to a sailor. Johnnie walked on air. At every shop window he came to he stopped to examine his foreign penny. But what was that in comparison with a real live parrot all the way from the West Indies? That night, Johnnie was the happiest boy in Kentish Town. He slept with the foreign penny under his pillow, and his dreams were of unparalleled magnificence. And on the sofa in the kitchen below, tossed and dozed the unhappiest boy in Kentish Town. He had escaped the police by a miracle, he was quit of Auntie, he was free of the selling of matches, but tomorrow or the day after he was leaving the only friends he had ever known. As for the sea and Mr. Thompson and the _Margaret Carey_, there was some subtle but deadly instinct in him that had warned him already. There would be no Mother to wash him and bind his wounds, or to give him fried bacon and see that he came to no harm. Twice he woke in the middle of the night, sweating with fear, and wildly calling her name. IX The next day it rained incessantly from morning till night, and there was just a faint hope in the boy's mind that it might prevent Mr. Thompson coming to fetch him. He clung desperately to this feeble straw, because it was the only one he had, but he was not such a fool as to think that Mr. Thompson was the kind of man who stays at home for the weather. Therefore it did not surprise him at all when he was solemnly told that evening about six o'clock, just after he had had his tea, that Mr. Thompson had come for him. Sure enough Mr. Thompson had. Moreover, he had come in a cab. All the same, he managed to enter the kitchen with the water running off his pea-jacket on mother's spotless floor, and as he stood blinking fiercely in the gas light, he looked bigger and hairier and less like a human being than ever. Henry Harper's one instinct was to take a tight hold of Mother's apron. And this he did in spite of the fact that Johnnie and Alfie and Percy were sitting round the table, drinking tea and eating bread and jam. Mother told Henry Harper very gently he must be a man, whereupon he did his best to meet Mr. Thompson boldly. But he made a very poor job of it indeed.