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Updated: May 11, 2025
Having thus placed the situation in a nutshell, as it were, he put his hands in his pockets and observed Frank covertly out of the corners of his eyes. Seeing how crestfallen he looked, the tramp presently spoke again. "Now, in my line of bizness it's not so important a carikter isn't. I might very likely look over it in takin' a pal if he asked me.
The kind old rector, the work, the supper, had roused old memories in his mind, and his tramping life of late seemed suddenly distasteful. He longed to "work honest and get wage," and feel a respectable boy again. If only this nice old gentleman would let him stay and work in his garden; but that, Frank remembered with a sigh, was hopeless, because he had "no carikter."
"Where's yer carikter? You 'ain't got none." Frank hung his head. He wondered he had not thought of this before. "This is where it lies," pursued his companion, holding out a very dirty hand dramatically in front of him. "You comes, as it might be, to me and you says, `I want a sitivation. Then I says, `Where's yer carikter? Then you says, `I 'ain't got one. Then I says, `Out yer go."
Nothing would induce him to steal, or even to share stolen booty; hunger, threats, bitterly sarcastic speeches were alike in vain, and at last Barney's scornful amusement at the "boy without a carikter" began to be mingled with a certain respect; not that he was the least inclined to follow his example and give up pilfering himself, but he thought it was "game" of the little 'un to hold his own, and that was a quality he could understand and admire.
It was hard, Frank thought, that he, a respectable Danecross boy, who had been to school, and sung in the choir, and whose folks had always worked honest and got good wages, should have come to this! That a vagrant tramp, who could neither read nor write, and who got his living anyhow, should be able to call him "a boy without a carikter!"
Barney made a gesture expressive of much contempt at the mention of these two dignitaries. "Parson and Schoolmaster!" he said derisively. "Why, in course they said so; they're paid to do it. That's how they earns their money. But jest you please to remember, that yer not Parson, not yit Schoolmaster, but a boy without a carikter, so shut up with yer preachin'." Without a character!
"Jest listen to him," he said, addressing Lord Beaconsfield for want of a more intelligent audience, "listen to him! Don't he preach fine? An' him a boy without a carikter too! Lies is wicked, eh? And stealin's wicked. Who told him that, I wonder?" "It's in the catekizum," continued Frank. "Parson allers said so, and Schoolmaster too."
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