Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/19

Rh "We never heard on him since, and mother's been worse nor ever. One day Tim Smith told me father was making a railway. I thought I'd go too. Perhaps I could sell papers to the chaps there. I saved up seven brownies and went to Spencer Street. I told the cove bobbing inside the window, like a jail-bird, to give me a ticket to where the railway was doing. He said they was making railways everywhere, and I might soon have one to the moon, if they got a member 'lected for there, or got the blind side of the commissioners.

"'None of your cheek,' says I, coz I knew he couldn't get through the window at me. 'Give us a ticket, a "holiday excursion" workman's ticket as far as your train will take me for them'—clapping down the brownies. He laughed and gave me one to Donnybreok. When I got there I could see no trains a-making. I just walked and walked. There was fine trees and birds singing in them, and flowers in the grass. But I could not see father. I asked a lot of chaps and they only said, 'Who're you? What are you a'ter here?' I'd never seen the country before. I didn't wonder father ran away there, only I thought he might'er taken me.

"'I'll stop here always,' says I, 'till I finds dad.'

"But I only found the bobby. He's everywhere! I hanged out in a stable, and a fat man comed in the morning and says I'd been stealing. I'd like to have punched his head. Then he got a bobby, with tights and boots on, looking mighty mashery as though he done no work, and he asked and asked like everybody else. When I told him about my father and mother, he said, 'You're a little runaway, you beggar. I'll send you back to town.' Then he shook me till I seed double. 'We want none of you larrikins here,' he calls out, very brave-like.