A CHILD OF THE JAGO
found broken speech. "W—w—wot for, sir?" he asked, huskily. "I ain't done nothink!"
"No, an' you sha'n't do nothink, that's more. Out ye go! If I see ye near the place agin I'll have ye locked up!"
Dicky slunk to the door. He felt the sobs coming, but he turned at the threshold and said with tremulous lips:—"Woncher gimme a chance, sir? S'elp me, I done me best. I—"
Mr. Grinder made a short rush from the back of the shop, and Dicky gave up and fled.
It was all over. There could never be a shop with "R. Perrott" painted over it, now; there would be no parlour with stuff-bottomed chairs and a piano for Em to play. He was cut off from the trolley for ever: Dicky was thirteen, and at that age the children of the Jago were past childish tears; but tears he could not smother, even till he might find a hiding-
232
