Fourth Chapter Charles Dickens

When I was lifted out of the cellar by two men, of whom one came peeping down alone first, and ran away and brought the other, I could hardly bear the light of the street. I was sitting in the road-way, blinking at it, and at a ring of people collected around me, but not close to me, when, true to my character of worldly little devil, I broke silence by saying, ‘I am hungry and thirsty!’

‘Does he know they are dead?’ asked one of another.

‘Do you know your father and mother are both dead of fevеr?’ asked a third of me sevеrely.

‘I don’t know what it is to be dead. I supposed it meant that, when the cup rattled against their teeth, and the water spilt over them. I am hungry and thirsty.’ That was all I had to say about it.

The ring of people widened outward from the inner side as I looked around me; and I smelt vinegar, and what I know to be camphor, thrown in towards where I sat. Presently some one put a great vessel of smoking vinegar on the ground near me; and then they all looked at me in silent horror as I ate and drank of what was brought for me. I knew at the time they had a horror of me, but I couldn’t help it.

I was still eating and drinking, and a murmur of discussion had begun to arise respecting what was to be done with me next, when I heard a cracked voice somewhere in the ring say, ‘My name is Hawkyard, Mr. Verity Hawkyard, of West Bromwich.’ Then the ring split in one place; and a yellow-faced, peak-nosed gentleman, clad all in iron-gray to his gaiters, pressed forward with a policeman and another official of some sort. He came forward close to the vessel of smoking vinegar; from which he sprinkled himself carefully, and me copiously.

‘He had a grandfather at Birmingham, this young boy, who is just dead too,’ said Mr. Hawkyard.

I turned my eyes upon the speaker, and said in a ravening manner, ‘Where’s his houses?’

‘Hah! Horrible worldliness on the edge of the grave,’ said Mr. Hawkyard, casting more of the vinegar over me, as if to get my devil out of me. ‘I have undertaken a slight—a very slight—trust in behalf of this boy; quite a voluntary trust: a matter of mere honour, if not of mere sentiment: still I have taken it upon myself, and it shall be (O, yes, it shall be!) discharged.’

The bystanders seemed to form an opinion of this gentleman much more favourable than their opinion of me.

‘He shall be taught,’ said Mr. Hawkyard, ‘(O, yes, he shall be taught!) but what is to be done with him for the present? He may be infected. He may disseminate infection.’ The ring widened considerably. ‘What is to be done with him?’

He held some talk with the two officials. I could distinguish no word save ‘Farm-house.’ There was another sound several times repeated, which was wholly meaningless in my ears then, but which I knew afterwards to be ‘Hoghton Towers.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Hawkyard. ‘I think that sounds promising; I think that sounds hopeful. And he can be put by himself in a ward, for a night or two, you say?’