Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/215

Rh "The swell."

"Well, I think he's uncommon handsome, and very easy in his manners, all things taken into consideration," said that elderly juvenile with deliberation.

"Oh, you do, do you, Slosh?"

Slosh repeats that he does.

Mr. Peters's gravity increases every moment. "Oh, you do, do you, Slosh?" he asks again, and again the boy answers. At last, to the considerable inconvenience of the passers-by, the detective makes a dead stop, and says, "I'm glad you think him han'some, Slosh; and I'm glad you thinks him easy, which, all things considered, he is, uncommon. In fact, I'm glad he meets your views as far as personal appearance goes, because, between you and me, Slosh, that man's your father."

It is the boy's turn to hold on to the lamp-post now. To have a ghost for a father, and, as Slosh afterwards remarked, "a ghost as wears polishy boots, and lives in Park Lane, too," was enough to take the breath out of any boy, however preternaturally elderly and superhumanly sharp his police-office experiences may have made him. On the whole, the "fondling" bears the shock very well, shakes off the effect of the information, and is ready for more in a minute.

"I wouldn't have you mention it just now, you know, Slosh," continues Mr. Peters, "because we don't know what he may turn out, and whether he may quite answer our purpose in the parental line. There's a little outstanding matter between me and him that I shall have to look him up for. I may want your help; and if I do, you'll give it faithful, won't you, Slosh?"

"Of course I will," said that young gentleman. "Is there any reward out for him, father?" He always called Mr. Peters father, and wasn't prepared to change his habit in deference to any ghostly phenomenon in the way of a parent suddenly turning up in Lombard Street. "Is there any reward out for him?" he asks, eagerly; "bankers is good for something in the levanting line, I know, nowadays."

The detective looked at the boy's sharp thin features with a scrutinising glance common to men of his profession.

"Then you'll serve me faithful, if I want you, Slosh? I thought perhaps you might let family interests interfere with business, you know."

"Not a bit of it," said the youthful enthusiast. "I'd hang my grandmother for a sovering, and the pride of catching her, if she was a downy one."

"Chips of old blocks is of the same wood, and it's only reasonable there should be a similarity in the grain," mused Mr. Peters; as he and the "fondling" rode home in an omnibus. "I thought I'd make him a genius, but I didn't know there