Page:A Child of the Jago - Arthur Morrison.djvu/54

 "No bloomin' fear. I'm goin' up 'Oxton wi' this 'ere."

Dicky sobbed his way down the stairs and through the passage to the back. In the yard he looked for Tommy Rann to sympathise, but Tommy was not; and Dicky paused in his grief to reflect that perhaps, indeed, in the light of calm reason, he would rather cast the story of the watch in a more heroic mould for Tommy's benefit than was compatible with tears and a belted back. So he turned and squeezed through a hole in the broken fence, sobbing again, in search of the friend that shared his inmost sorrows.

The belting was bad—very bad. There was broken skin on his shins where the strap had curled 'round, and there was a little sticky blood under the shirt half way up his back: to say nothing of bruises. But it was the hopeless injustice of things that shook him to the soul. Wholly