Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/184

 piece of newspaper, and, after dark, step out and leave the parcel on a ledge of the stonework outside the building in the street. Every morning it would be gone. A shadow came along in the night and took it, This went on for many months, till at last one night the man-whose-name-doesn't-matter forgot to put the parcel out, and didn't think of it till he was in bed. It worried him, so that at last he had to get up and put the scraps outside. It was midnight. He felt curious to see the shadow, so he waited until it came along. It wasn't his long-lost brother, but it was an old mate of his.

Let us finish with a sketch:―

The scene was Circular Quay, outside the Messageries sheds. The usual number of bundles of misery―covered more or less with dirty sheets of newspaper―lay along the wall under the ghastly glare of the electric light. Time―shortly after midnight. From among the bundles an old man sat up. He cautiously drew off his pants, and then stood close to the wall, in his shirt, tenderly examining the seat of the trousers. Presently he shook them out, folded them with great care, wrapped them in a scrap of newspaper, and laid them down where his head was to be. He had thin, hairy legs and a long grey beard. From a bundle of rags he extracted another pair of pants, which were all patches and tatters, and into which he engineered his way with great caution. Then he sat down, arranged the paper over his knees, laid his old ragged grey head back on his precious Sunday-go-meetings―and slept.