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Updated: May 9, 2025
The latter said good-morning first; but, simple as his words were, the gaol-bird manner of guarded suspicion crept into them and stamped the speaker. "Don't like the looks of you, mister!" said Uncle Mo to himself. But aloud he said: "Good-morning to you, sir. I understood you to be inquiring for Mrs. Prichard." "No Daverill. No such a name, this young shaver says." "Not down this Court.
He passed a newspaper-office, where the thunder of machinery and the glare of the case-room reminded him of his own bitter apprenticeship at the Rocket. They might find him a job here if he applied. Faugh! who would take a gaol-bird, a "let-off" swindler, into their employ? He strolled down to the docks. The great river lay asleep. The docks were, deserted; the dockyards silent.
And yet how much better than to act rashly a second time... How terrible that scene was to me! The expression in that flabby woman's face, leading her on to give herself to that gaol-bird, not for a few hours, as she would, but for a lifetime, as she must.
"Couldn't say to a nicety. But she would stand a tidy chance of getting ripped up, next opportunity." He seemed pleased at his expression of this fact, as he took the first pulls at a fresh pipe, on the window-seat with his boots against the shutter and a grip of interlaced fingers behind his close-cut head for support. Why in Heaven's name does the released gaol-bird crop his hair?
Suddenly he remembered that he had not told her of this incident in his family history. She too would be reading her newspaper this morning. He saw her proud lips curl. The son of a gaol-bird! He tore the photograph from its frame and threw it into the fire and watched it burn. As the paper writhed under the heat, the lips seemed to twist into sad reproach. He turned away impatiently.
The prison warder, seeing at once that he was a clergyman, did not suppose he was shamming, as he might have done in the case of an old gaol-bird; he therefore sent for the doctor. When this gentleman arrived, Ernest was declared to be suffering from an incipient attack of brain fever, and was taken away to the infirmary.
His mother, however, retained some influence over him, and persuaded him, a year later, before he had had time to dissipate the whole of his inheritance, to return with her to England, hoping that the moral effect of a change from the gaol-bird atmosphere of felony that hung over the whole land of his birth would develop whatever germ of honour or right feeling he possessed.
When I woke in the morning and called to mind Jack's confidence of the night before, I could hardly believe I had not dreamt it. I had always guessed, and I dare say the reader has guessed too, that there was some mystery attached to my friend's home. But I had never thought of this. No wonder now, when other boys had tormented him and called him "gaol-bird," he had flared up with unwonted fire.
"I say, introduce us, Batch," said the Field-Marshal, "and to the other aristocrat, too, will you?" "Why, that's Bull's-eye," cried Crow. "You know, Twins, the fellow I told you about who's " "Oh, that's the Botany Bay hero, is it?" cried Masham. "I must shake hands with him. One doesn't get the chance of saying how d'ye do to a real gaol-bird every day. How are you, Treadmill?"
This mild reply seemed to exasperate Harris far more than an angry retort would have done. He was naturally short-tempered, and when conscious that he was being worsted in an argument before his fellow- clerks he was always particularly savage. He walked up to Smith and demanded furiously, "Didn't I tell you I'm not going to be spoken to by a low gaol-bird like you?
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