Page:A Child of the Jago - Arthur Morrison.djvu/183

 For one thing, they feared in him what they took for a sort of supernatural insight. The mean cunning of the Jago, subtle as it was, and baffling to most strangers, foundered miserably before his relentless intelligence; and crafty rogues—'wide as Broad Street,' as their proverb went—at first sulked, faltered and prevaricated transparently, but soon gave up all hope of effort to deceive him. Thus he was respected. Once he had made it plain that he was no common milch-cow in the matter of gratuities—to be bamboozled for shillings, cajoled for coals, and bullied for blankets—then there became apparent in him qualities of charity and loving-kindness, well-judged and governed, that awoke in places a regard that was in a way akin to affection. And the familiar habit of the Jago slowly grew to call him Father Sturt.

Father Sturt was not to be overreached: that was the axiom gloomily accepted by