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Jack, pushing to the front, took in the scene and took off his coat in the same instant.

“Now then, my fine old English gentleman,” he sang out, “come and have a try at me for a change.”

The tramp was a burly ruffian, and I have seen better boxers than Jack. He got himself a black eye, and a nasty cut over the lip, before he hardly knew where he was. But in spite of that–and a good deal more–he stuck to his man and finished him.

At the end, as he helped his adversary up, I heard him say to the fellow in a kindly whisper:–

“You’re too good a sort, you know, to whollop a woman. Why, you very near give me a licking. You must have forgot yourself, matey.”

The fellow interested me. I waited and walked on with him. He told me about his home in London, at Mile End–about his old father and mother, his little brothers and sisters–and what he was saving up to do for them. Kindliness oozed from every pore in his skin.

Many that we met knew him, and all, when they saw his round, red face, smiled unconsciously. At the corner of the High Street a pale-faced little drudge of a girl passed us, saying as she slipped by “Good-evening, Mr. Burridge.”

He made a dart and caught her by the shoulder.

“And how is father?” he asked.

“Oh, if you please, Mr. Burridge, he is out again. All the mills is closed,” answered the child.

“And mother?”

“She don’t get no better, sir.”

“And who’s keeping you all?”

“Oh, if you please, sir, Jimmy’s earning something now,” replied the mite.

He took a couple of sovereigns from his waistcoat pocket, and closed the child’s hand upon them.

“That’s all right, my lass, that’s all right,” he said, stopping her stammering thanks. “You write to me if things don’t get better. You know where to find Jack Burridge.”

Strolling about the streets in the evening, I happened to pass the inn where he was staying. The parlour window was open, and out into the misty night his deep, cheery voice, trolling forth an old-fashioned drinking song, came rolling like a wind, cleansing the corners of one’s heart with its breezy humanness. He was sitting at the head of the table surrounded by a crowd of jovial cronies. I lingered for a while watching the scene. It made the world appear a less sombre dwelling-place than I had sometimes pictured it.

I determined, on my return to London, to look him up, and accordingly one evening started to find the little by-street off the Mile End Road in which he lived. As I turned the corner he drove up in his dog-cart; it was a smart turn-out. On the seat beside him sat a neat, withered little old woman, whom he introduced to me as his mother.

“I tell ‘im it’s a fine gell as ‘e oughter ‘ave up ‘ere aside ‘im,” said the old lady, preparing to dismount, “an old woman like me takes all the paint off the show.”

“Get along with yer,” he replied laughingly, jumping down and handing the reins to the lad who had been waiting, “you could give some of the young uns points yet, mother. I allus promised the old lady as she should ride behind her own ‘oss one day,” he continued, turning to me, “didn’t I, mother?”

“Ay, ay,” replied the old soul, as she hobbled nimbly up the steps, “ye’re a good son, Jack, ye’re a good son.”

He led the way into the parlour. As he entered every face lightened up with pleasure, a harmony of joyous welcome greeted him. The old hard world had been shut out with the slam of the front door. I seemed to have wandered into Dickensland. The red-faced man with the small twinkling eyes and the lungs of leather loomed before me, a large, fat household fairy. From his capacious pockets came forth tobacco for the old father; a huge bunch of hot-house grapes for a neighbour’s sickly child, who was stopping with them; a book of Henty’s–beloved of boys–for a noisy youngster who called him “uncle”; a bottle of port wine for a wan, elderly woman with a swollen face–his widowed sister-in-law, as I subsequently learned; sweets enough for the baby (whose baby I don’t know) to make it sick for a week; and a roll of music for his youngest sister.