‘I walked on my ten toes!’ cried John; ‘tramped the whole way from Browndean; and begged! I would like to see you beg. It’s not so easy as you might suppose. I played it on being a shipwrecked mariner from Blyth; I don’t know where Blyth is, do you? but I thought it sounded natural. I begged from a little beast of a schoolboy, and he forked out a bit of twine, and asked me to make a clove hitch; I did, too, I know I did, but he said it wasn’t, he said it was a granny’s knot, and I was a what-d’ye-call-’em, and he would give me in charge. Then I begged from a naval officer--he never bothered me with knots, but he only gave me a tract; there’s a nice account of the British navy!--and then from a widow woman that sold lollipops, and I got a hunch of bread from her. Another party I fell in with said you could generally always get bread; and the thing to do was to break a plateglass window and get into gaol; seemed rather a brilliant scheme. Pass the beef.’ ‘Why didn’t you stay at Browndean?’ Morris ventured to enquire. ‘Skittles!’ said John. ‘On what? The Pink Un and a measly religious paper? I had to leave Browndean; I had to, I tell you. I got tick at a public, and set up to be the Great Vance; so would you, if you were leading such a beastly existence! And a card stood me a lot of ale and stuff, and we got swipey, talking about music-halls and the piles of tin I got for singing; and then they got me on to sing “Around her splendid form I weaved the magic circle,” and then he said I couldn’t be Vance, and I stuck to it like grim death I was. It was rot of me to sing, of course, but I thought I could brazen it out with a set of yokels. It settled my hash at the public,’ said John, with a sigh. ‘And then the last thing was the carpenter--’ ‘Our landlord?’ enquired Morris.