Page:A Child of the Jago - Arthur Morrison.djvu/26

 pushing back his hat once more, called sweetly and silkily, "Dicky Perrott!" and beckoned with his finger.

The boy approached, and as he did so the man's skeleton hand suddenly shot out and gripped him by the collar. "It-never-does-to-see-too-much!" Beveridge said, in a series of shouts, close to the boy's ear. "Now go home," he added in a more ordinary tone, with a push to make his meaning plain: and straightway relapsed against the wall.

The boy scowled and backed off the pavement. His ragged jacket was coarsely made from one much larger, and he hitched the collar over his shoulder as he slunk toward a doorway some few yards on. Front doors were used merely as firewood in the Old Jago, and most had been burnt there many years ago. If, perchance, one could have been found still on its hinges it stood ever open, and probably would not shut. Thus at night the Jago doorways