Page:A Child of the Jago - Arthur Morrison.djvu/327

 bring him sixteen shillings and perhaps a little more; and he had taken Father Sturt's encouragement to try another week, and a week after that. Father Sturt, too, had cunningly stimulated Kiddo's ambitions: till he cherished aspirations to a fruit and vegetable stall, with a proper tarpaulin cover for bad weather; though he cherished these in secret, confident that they were of his own independent conception. Perhaps the Perrotts saw as much of Kiddo as did anybody at this time. For Kiddo, seeing how it went with them (though indeed it went as badly with others, too), laboriously built up a solemn and most circumstantial Lie. There was a friend of his, a perfect gentleman, who used a beer-shop by Spitalfields Market, and who had just started an extensive and complicated business in the general provision line. He sold all sorts of fruit and vegetables fresh, and all sorts of meat,