Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/761

Rh He met Mr. Traveller's eye without lifting up his head, merely depressing his chin a little (for he was lying on his back) to get a better view of him.

"Good-day!" said Mr. Traveller.

"Same to you, if you like it," returned the tinker.

"Don't you like it? It's a very fine day."

"I ain't partickler in weather," returned the tinker, with a yawn.

Mr. Traveller had walked up to where he lay, and was looking down at him. " This is a curious place," said Mr. Traveller.

"Ay, I suppose so I" returned the tinker. "Tom Tiddler's Ground, they call this."

"Are you well acquainted with it?"

"Never saw it afore to-day," said the tinker, with another yawn, " and I don't care if I never see it again.

There was a man here just now, told me what it was called. If you want to see Tom himself, you must go in at the gate." He faintly indicated with his chin a little mean ruin of a wooden gate at the side of the house.

"Have you seen Tom?"

"No, and I ain't partickler to see him. I can see a dirty man anywhere."

"He does not live in the house, then?" said Mr. Traveller, casting his eyes upon the house anew.

"The man said," returned the tinker, rather irritably,—"him as was here just now—'this what you're a-lyingon, mate, is Tom Tiddler's Ground. And if you want to see Tom,' he says, 'you must go in at that gate.' The man come out at that gate himself, and he ought to know."

"Certainly," said Mr. Traveller.

"Though, perhaps," exclaimed the tinker, so struck by the brightness of his own idea, that it had the electric effect upon him of causing him to lift up his head an inch or so," perhaps he was a liar! He told some rum 'uns him as was here just now, did about this place of Tom's. He says—him as was here just now—'When Tom shut up the house, mate, to go to rack, the beds was left, all made, like as if somebody was a-going to sleep in every bed. And if you was to walk through the bedrooms now, you'd see the ragged mouldy bed-clothes a-heaving and a-heaving like seas. And a-heaving and a-heaving with what?' he says. 'Why, with the rats under em.'"