<h2><SPAN name="page249"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>XXX.</h2>
<p>“<span class="smcap">Why</span> what’s
that?” said Long Hicks on the way to work in the
morning. “Got cuts all over yer hands!”</p>
<p>“Yes,” Johnny answered laconically.
“Fighting.”</p>
<p>“Fightin’!” Long Hicks looked mighty
reproachful. “Jest you be careful what company
you’re gettin’ into,” he said severely.
“You’re neglectin’ yer drawin’ and
everything lately, an’ now—fightin’!”</p>
<p>“I ain’t ashamed of it,” Johnny replied
gloomily. “An’ I’ve got other things to
think about now, besides drawing.”</p>
<p>Hicks stared, stuttered a little, and rubbed his cap over his
head. He wondered whether or not he ought to ask
questions.</p>
<p>They went a little way in silence, and then Johnny said:
“It’s him; Butson.”</p>
<p>“No!” exclaimed Hicks, checking in his stride, and
staring at Johnny again. “What! Bin
fightin’ Butson?”</p>
<p>Johnny poured out the whole story; and as he told
Hicks’s eyes widened, his face flushed and paled, his hands
opened and closed convulsively, and again and again he blew and
stuttered incomprehensibly.</p>
<p>“Job is, to drive the brute away,” Johnny
concluded wearily. “He’ll stop as long as
he’s fed. An’ <SPAN name="page250"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>mother thinks it’s a disgrace
to get a separation—goin’ before a magistrate
an’ all. I’m only tellin’ you because I
know you won’t jaw about it among the
neighbours.”</p>
<p>That day Long Hicks got leave of absence for the rest of the
week, mightily astonishing Mr. Cottam by the application, for
Hicks had never been known to take a holiday before.</p>
<p>“’Awright,” the gaffer growled,
“seein’ as we’re slack. There’s one
or two standin’ auf for a bit a’ready. But
what’s up with you wantin’ time auf?
Gittin’ frisky? Runnin’ arter the
gals?”</p>
<p>And indeed Long Hicks spent his holiday much like a man who is
running after something, or somebody. He took a walking
tour of intricate plan, winding and turning among the small
streets, up street and down, but tending northward; through
Bromley, Bow and Old Ford, and so toward Homerton and the
marshes.</p>
<p>Meantime Johnny walked to and from his work alone, and
brooded. He could not altogether understand his
mother’s attitude toward Butson. She had been
willing, even anxious, to get rid of him by any process that
would involve no disgrace among the neighbours, and no peril to
the trade of the shop; he had made her life miserable; yet now
she tended the brute’s cuts and bumps as though he
didn’t deserve them, and she cried more than ever. As
for Johnny himself, he spared Butson nothing. Rather he
drew a hideous <SPAN name="page251"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
251</span>solace from any torture wherewith he might afflict
him.</p>
<p>“When are you going to clear out?” he would
say. “You’d rather be kept than work, but you
don’t like being thrashed, do you? Thrashed by a boy,
eh? You’ll enjoy work a deal better than the life
I’ll lead you here, I can tell you. I’ll make
you glad to drown yourself, mean funk as you are, before
I’m done with you! Don’t be too careful with
that eye: the sooner it’s well, the sooner I’ll bung
it up again!”</p>
<p>Bessy marvelled at this development of morose savagery on her
brother’s part. With her, though he spoke little, he
was kinder than ever, but it was his pastime to bully Butson: who
skulked miserably in the house, being in no fit state for public
exhibition.</p>
<p>As to his search for Nora Sansom, Johnny was vaguely surprised
to find himself almost indifferent. It would have been
useless to worry his mother about it now, and though he spent an
hour or two in aimless tramping about the streets, it was with
the uppermost feeling that he should rather be at home, bullying
Butson. He had no notion why, being little given to
introspection; and he was as it were unconscious of his inner
conviction that after all Nora could not be entirely lost.
While Butson’s punishment was the immediate concern, and as
the thing stood, the creature seemed scarce to have been punished
at all.</p>
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