Page:A Child of the Jago - Arthur Morrison.djvu/25

 watch-guard had been. Clearly, here was an uncommonly remunerative cosh—a cosh so good that the boots had been neglected, and remained on the man's feet. These the kneeling two unlaced deftly, and, rising, prize in hand, vanished in the deeper shadow of Jago Row.

A small boy, whom they met full tilt at the corner, staggered out to the gutter and flung a veteran curse after them. He was a slight child, by whose size you might have judged his age at five. But his face was of serious and troubled age. One who knew the children of the Jago, and could tell, might have held him eight, or from that to nine.

He replaced his hands in his trousers pockets and trudged up the street. As he brushed by the coshed man he glanced again toward Jago Row, and, jerking his thumb that way, "Done 'im for 'is boots," he piped. But nobody marked him till he reached Jago Court, when old Beveridge,