CHAPTER I.

GIP'S FIRST BREATH.

GOING along one of the back streets of the East End of London on a sultry summer day is by no means a pleasant or refreshing walk. The middle of the street is narrow, and the kennels bordering the side pavements are usually choked up with refuse thrown out from the dwellings on either hand. Heaps of rotting fruit, potato-parings, and decaying cabbage-leaves lie about the causeways, to be eagerly turned over and over in search of a prize by half-famished children, whose only anxiety, during the summer months, is to satisfy, if possible, the hunger always gnawing at them.

There is no sweet scent in the air—no freshness; what scents there may be, are the very reverse of sweet. The sun smites down upon the closely built houses and dirty pavement and un-watered street, till fever seems to follow in the trail of the sultry days. At each end of such streets there generally stands a busy spirit-vault, which carries on a thriving trade; for the dry air makes every one athirst, and the door swings to and fro incessantly with the stream of men, women, and children passing in and out.

But at the back of these thoroughfares, there lie close alleys and courts, where the heat is still more unbearable. No current of air runs through them; and they are so shut out of sight that those who live in them feel no shame, and no fear of being seen by any one less wretched than themselves. There is a dead level of misery and degradation. The dirt becomes more loathsome, and the diseases bred by it more deadly. Half the children born in them die before they have lived out their twelve months of misery. Only those who are singularly strong, or are specially cared for by their mothers, live into the second year. Babies' funerals are so frequent they excite no notice, except that of the children who have survived the common fate, and who follow the little coffin to the end of their own alley, leaving it there, to be carried away into some dim region, of which they know nothing. As for the mothers, the greater portion of them seem to have lost their natural love for their little ones, and are glad to be rid of a care which would have made their lives a still heavier burden to them.

It was in one of these close, pent-up alleys that a boy was idling, one hot summer noonday, about the door of a small dwelling in the corner farthest from the street,—a poor house, like all the rest, with more panes of brown paper in its windows than of glass. The four rooms of it, two on each floor, were tenanted by as many families, with their lodgers. There seemed to be a little excitement within, and several women were bustling about, and could be seen through the open door going up and down the staircase. At that time of the day there were but few men about the yard; for most of them were costermongers, and were away at work. But the alley was tolerably well filled with almost naked children, playing noisily in the open gutter, or fighting with one another with still louder noise.

The boy joined none of them, but looked on with an absent and anxious face, from time to time peeping in through the open door, or listening intently to every sound in the room at the top of the crazy staircase. All at once he heard a feeble wailing cry; and the tears started into his eyes, why he did not know, but he brushed them off his face hastily, and kept his head turned away, lest anybody should see them.

"Sandy!" shouted a woman's voice from the stairhead. "Sandy, give us your jacket to wrap the baby in."

If it had been the depth of winter, he would have stripped off his ragged jacket willingly for the new baby. He had a passion for young helpless creatures, and he had nursed and tended two other babies before this one, and had seen them both fade away slowly, and die in this unwholesome air.

He did not care much for his mother; how could he, when he seldom saw her sober? But the babies were very precious to him; dearer even than the mongrel cur he had contrived to keep in secret for a long time, but which had been taken from him because he could not pay the duty. There was no duty upon babies;—Sandy remembered that joyfully. The police would take no inconvenient notice of this new little creature. He might carry it about with him, and play with it, and teach it all sorts of pretty tricks, with no danger of losing it.

"Is it a gel or a boy?" he asked eagerly from the woman, who hurried downstairs for his jacket.

"A little gel!" she answered. "A reg'lar little gipsy, with black eyes, and black hair all over its head."

"Let me have her as soon as you can," urged Sandy, rubbing his hands, and dancing upon the doorstep, to let off a little of his pleasurable excitement.

[Illustration: He stole round the costermonger's barrow, sat down on one of the baskets, and then peeped at the new little face.]

"You can have her d'reckly," said the woman; "it's as hot as an oven everywhere to-day."

"I'll come for her," replied Sandy, following her up to the door.

In a few minutes a small bundle was handed out to him, wrapped in his old jacket; and he trod softly and cautiously downstairs, with it in his arms.

He was at a loss for some secluded corner, where he could look at his new treasure; for he did not wish to have all the brawling, shouting children in the alley crowding about him, as he knew they would be in an instant, if he sat down on the doorstep with that mysterious little bundle on his lap. A rapid glance showed him a costermonger's barrow reared on one end in a corner, with a basket or two on the ground. He stole round it, and sat down on one of the baskets; then, slowly opening the jacket, peeped at the new little face.

How was it that the tears dimmed his eyes again? The recollection of Tom and little Vic, lying now in their tiny coffins deep down in the ground, came back so vividly to him, that he could not see this baby for crying. He knew it was a bad thing to do, and he was angry with himself, and dreadfully afraid of any one finding it out, yet for a minute or two, he could not conquer it. But after rubbing his eyes diligently with the sleeve of the jacket, he found them clear enough to look carefully at his prize.

A thorough gipsy, no doubt of that. Eyes as black as coal, and the little head all covered with the blackest hair. She lay quite content in his arms, looking seriously up into his face, as if she could really see it, and wanted to make sure what sort of a brother he was going to be to her. Sandy puckered up his features into a broad smile, whistled to her softly, put his finger into her small mouth, and trotted her very gently on his knee.

The baby was "as good as gold;" she did not cry, and so betray their hiding-place. But her black solemn eyes never turned away from their gaze at Sandy's face.

"Oh! I wish there were somebody as could keep it alive for me!" thought Sandy, sorrowfully.

He had a vague notion that there was some one, somewhere, who could save the new-born baby from dying, as Tom and little Vic had died. In the streets he had seen numbers of rich babies, who did not want for anything, and whose cheeks were fat and rosy, not at all like the puny, wasted babies in the alley. But how it happened, whether it was simply because they were rich, or because there was somebody who could keep them alive, and cared more for them than for the poor, he could not tell. He had often watched them with longing eyes, and knew how pretty they looked in their blue or scarlet cloaks and white hoods, and he wished now with all his heart that he could find some one who would keep little Gipsy alive for him. He called the baby Gipsy to himself and others, and no one in the alley took any trouble to give her another name. What was the good of registering a baby that was sure to be dead in a short time?

Sandy's mother was up and about her business again in a few days. She earned her living, when she took the trouble to earn it, by going about as a costermonger, as most of her neighbours did. When she had enough strength of mind to save four or five shillings from the spirit-vault at the corner of the street, she would hire a barrow for a week, and lay in a stock of cheap fruit and vegetables, and Sandy would go with her to push it. But that was very occasionally; it was seldom that her strength of mind did not fail before the temptation of another and another dram.

Then Sandy was thrown upon his own resources, and gained a very scanty supply for his wants by selling fusees near the Mansion House, or any other crowded spot, where one in a thousand of the passers-by might see him, and by chance patronize him. Often, when there was no baby at home, he did not go there for weeks, but slept wherever he could find a shelter—in an empty cart, or under a tarpaulin; even without a shelter, if this could not be had.

If his mother came across him during these spells of wandering, the only proof of relationship she manifested was her demand for any and all of the halfpence he might have in his possession, and her diligent search among his rags for them. It was only when there was a baby that Sandy went home as regularly as the night fell, carrying with him a sticky finger of some cheap sweetmeat, which contained almost more of poison than of sugar.

Gip was left to his care even more than the other babies. By this time his mother had become too inveterate a drunkard to take much interest in her. Now and then she would bear her off in her arms to the spirit-vault, and come reeling back with her, to Sandy's great alarm. But in general she took no notice of Gipsy, and left the boy to tend her as well as he could. It was a good thing for the baby. Sandy carried her out of the foul air into the broader and opener streets, often lingering wistfully at a baker's window till he got a wholesome crust for her to nibble at.

His jacket continued to be almost the only clothing she had, and as the winter came on, he shivered with cold, till his benumbed arms could scarcely hold her. But that he bore without a murmur, for who was there to complain to? He had never known a friend to whom he could go and say, "I am hungry, and cold, and almost naked."

He had never heard that it had once been said, "Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me."

Was it possible that Sandy could be one of the least of these His brethren?

There was, however, this great and last difficulty in Sandy's case. If any one had clothed him, doing it in remembrance of their Lord, his mother would have immediately pawned the clothes, and spent the money in the spirit-vault.

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