The boy pressed his arm gratefully, but made no reply.

This was all Mr Durfy wanted to fill up the vials of his wrath.

"You miserable young hound you," said he, with an oath; "let go the boy this moment, or I'll turn you out of the place--and him too."

Reginald made no reply. His face was pale, but he kept the boy's arm still fast in his own.

"Going with you, indeed?" shouted Mr Durfy; "going with you, is he? to learn how to cant and sing psalms! Not if I know it--or if he does, you and he and your brother and your old fool of a mother--"

Mr Durfy never got to the end of that sentence. A blow straight from the shoulder of the Wilderham captain sent him sprawling on the pavement before the word was well out of his mouth.

It had come now. It had been bound to come sooner or later, and Reginald, as he drew the boy's arm once more under his own, felt almost a sense of relief as he stood and watched Mr Durfy slowly pick himself up and collect his scattered wardrobe.

It was some time before the operation was complete, and even then Mr Durfy's powers of speech had not returned. With a malignant scowl he stepped up to his enemy and hissed the one menace,--

"All right!" and then walked away.

Reginald waited till he had disappeared round the corner, and then, turning to his companion, took a long breath and said,--

"Come along, young 'un; it can't be helped."

The reader must forgive me if I ask him to leave the two lads to walk to Dull Street by themselves, while he accompanies me in the wake of the outraged and mud-stained Mr Durfy.

That gentleman was far more wounded in his mind than in his person. He may have been knocked down before in his life, but he had never, as far as he could recollect, been quite so summarily routed by a boy half his age earning only eighteen shillings a week! And the conviction that some people would think he had only got his deserts in what he had suffered, pained him very much indeed.

He did not go to the Alhambra. His clothes were too dirty, and his spirits were far too low. He did, in the thriftiness of his soul, attempt to sell his orders in the crowd at the theatre door. But no one rose to the bait, so he had to put them back in his pocket on the chance of being able to "doctor up" the date and crush in with them some other day. Then he mooned listlessly up and down the streets for an hour till his clothes were dry, and then turned into a public-house to get a brush down and while away another hour.

Still the vision of Reginald standing where he had last seen him with young Gedge at his side haunted him and spoiled his pleasure. He wandered forth again, feeling quite lonely, and wishing some one or something would turn up to comfort him. Nor was he disappointed.

"The very chap," said a voice suddenly at his side when he was beginning to despair of any diversion.

"So it is. How are you, my man? We were talking of you not two minutes ago."

Durfy pulled up and found himself confronted by two gentlemen, one about forty and the other a fashionable young man of twenty-five.

"How are you, Mr Medlock?" said he to the elder in as familiar a tone as he could a.s.sume; "glad to see you, sir. How are you, too, Mr Shanklin, pretty well?"

"Pretty fair," said Mr Shanklin. "Come and have a drink, Durfy. You look all in the blues. Gone in love, I suppose, eh? or been speculating on the Stock Exchange? You shouldn't, you know, a respectable man like you."

"He looks as if he'd been speculating in mud," said Mr Medlock, pointing to the unfortunate overseer's collar and hat, which still bore traces of his recent calamity. "Never mind; we'll wash it off in the Bodega. Come along."

Durfy felt rather shy at first in his grand company, especially with the consciousness of his muddy collar. But after about half an hour in the Bodega he recovered his self-possession, and felt himself at home.

"By the way," said Mr Medlock, filling up his visitor's gla.s.s, "last time we saw you you did us nicely over that tip for the Park Races, my boy! If Alf and I hadn't been hedged close up, we should have lost a pot of money."

"I'm very sorry," said Durfy. "You see, another telegram came after the one I showed you, that I never saw; that's how it happened. I really did my best for you."

"But it's a bad job, if we pay you to get hold of the _Rocket's_ telegrams and then lose our money over it," said Mr Medlock. "Never mind this time, but you'd better look a little sharper, my boy. There's the Brummagem Cup next week, you know, and we shall want to know the latest scratches on the night before. It'll be worth a fiver to you if you work it well, Durfy. Fill up your gla.s.s."

Mr Durfy obeyed, glad enough to turn the conversation from the miscarriage of his last attempt to filch his employers' telegrams for the benefit of his betting friends' and his own pocket.

"By the way," said Mr Shanklin, presently, "Moses and I have got a little Company on hand just now, Durfy. What do you think of that?"

"A company?" said Mr Durfy; "I'll wager it's not a limited one, if you're at the bottom of it! What's your little game now?"

"It's a little idea of Alf's," said Mr Medlock, whose Christian name was Moses, "and it ought to come off too. This is something the way of it. Suppose you were a young greenhorn, Durfy--which I'm afraid you aren't--and saw an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the _Rocket_ saying you could make two hundred and fifty pounds a year easy without interfering with your business, eh? what would you do?"

"If I was a greenhorn," said Durfy, "I'd answer the advertis.e.m.e.nt and enclose a stamped envelope for a reply."

"To be sure you would! And the reply would be, we'd like to have a look at you, and if you looked as green as we took you for, we'd ask for a deposit, and then allow you to sell wines and cigars and that sort of fancy goods to your friends. You'd sell a dozen of port at sixty shillings, do you see? half the cash down and half on delivery. We'd send your friend a dozen at twelve and six, and if he didn't sh.e.l.l out the other thirty bob on delivery, we'd still have the thirty bob he paid down to cover our loss. Do you twig?"

Durfy laughed. "Do you dream all these things," he said, "or how do you ever think of them?"

"Genius, my boy; genius," said Mr Medlock. "Of course," he added, "it couldn't run for long, but we might give it a turn for a month or two."

"The worst of it is," put in Mr Shanklin, "it's a ticklish sort of business that some people are uncommon sharp at smelling out; one has to be very careful. There's the advertis.e.m.e.nt, for instance. You'll have to smuggle it into the _Rocket_, my boy. It wouldn't do for the governors to see it; they'd be up to it. But they'd never see it after it was in, and the _Rocket's_ just the paper for us."

"I'll try and manage that," said Durfy. "You give it me, and I'll stick it in with a batch of others somehow."

"Alf thinks we'd better do the thing from Liverpool," continued Mr Medlock, "and all we want is a good secretary--a nice, green, innocent, stupid, honest young fellow--that's what we want. If we could pick up one of that sort, there's no doubt of the thing working."

Mr Durfy started and coloured up, and then looked first at Mr Medlock and then at Mr Shanklin.

"What's the matter? Do you think _you'd_ suit the place?" asked the former, with a laugh.

"No; but I know who will!"

"You do! Who?"

"A young puppy under me at the _Rocket_?" said Durfy, excitedly; "the very man to a T!" And he thereupon launched into a description of Reginald's character in a way which showed that not only was he a shrewd observer of human nature in his way, but, when it served his purpose, could see the good even in a man he hated.

"I tell you," said he, "he's born for you, if you can only get him! And if you don't think so after what I've said, perhaps you'll believe me when I tell you, on the quiet, he knocked me down in the gutter this very evening because I wanted to carry off a young convert of his to make a night of it at the Alhambra. There, what do you think of that?

I wouldn't tell tales of myself like that for fun, I can tell you!"

"There's no mistake about that being the sort of chap we want," said Mr Medlock.

"If only we can get hold of him," said Mr Shanklin.

"Leave that to me," said Mr Durfy; "only if he comes to you never say a word about me, or he'll shy off."

Whereupon these three guileless friends finished their gla.s.ses and separated in great good spirits and mutual admiration.

CHAPTER NINE.

SAMUEL SHUCKLEFORD COMES OF AGE.

Reginald, meanwhile, blissfully unconscious of the arrangements which were being made for him, spent as comfortable an evening as he could in the conviction that to-morrow would witness his dismissal from the _Rocket_, and see him a waif on the great ocean of London life. To his mother, and even to young Gedge, he said nothing of his misgivings, but to Horace, as the two lay awake that night, he made a clean breast of all.