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“If you please, sir,” said Tommy, entering, and depositing his bag on the counter, “have you got any cast-off clothes you don’t want?”

The baker turned to a shelf, and selecting a stale loaf cut it in halves, one of which he placed before the boy.

“I don’t want bread,” said Tommy desperately; “but mother has just died, and father wants mourning for the funeral. He’s only got a new suit with him, and if he can change these things of mother’s for an old suit, he’d sell his best ones to bury her with.”

He shook the articles out on the counter, and the baker’s wife, who had just come into the shop, inspected them rather favourably.

“Poor boy, so you’ve lost your mother,” she said, turning the clothes over. “It’s a good skirt, Bill.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Tommy dolefully.

“What did she die of?” inquired the baker.

“Scarlet fever,” said Tommy, tearfully, mentioning the only disease he knew.

“Scar–Take them things away,” yelled the baker, pushing the clothes on to the floor, and following his wife to the other end of the shop. “Take ’em away directly, you young villain.”

His voice was so loud, his manner so imperative, that the startled boy, without stopping to argue, stuffed the clothes pell-mell into the bag again and departed. A farewell glance at the clock made him look almost as horrified as the baker.

“There’s no time to be lost,” he muttered, as he began to run; “either the old man’ll have to come in these or else stay where he is.”

He reached the house breathless, and paused before an unshaven man in time-worn greasy clothes, who was smoking a short clay pipe with much enjoyment in front of the door.

“Is Cap’n Bross here?” he panted.

“He’s upstairs,” said the man, with a leer, “sitting in sackcloth and ashes, more ashes than sackcloth. Have you got some clothes for him?”

“Look here,” said Tommy. He was down on his knees with the mouth of the bag open again, quite in the style of the practised hawker. “Give me an old suit of clothes for them. Hurry up. There’s a lovely frock.”

“Blimey,” said the man, staring, “I’ve only got these clothes. Wot d’yer take me for? A dook?”

“Well, get me some somewhere,” said Tommy. “If you don’t the cap’n ‘ll have to come in these, and I’m sure he won’t like it.”

“I wonder what he’d look like,” said the man, with a grin. “Damme if I don’t come up and see.”

“Get me some clothes,” pleaded Tommy.

“I wouldn’t get you clothes, no, not for fifty pun,” said the man severely. “Wot d’yer mean wanting to spoil people’s pleasure in that way? Come on, come and tell the cap’n what you’ve got for ‘im, I want to ‘ear what he ses. He’s been swearing ‘ard since ten o’clock this morning, but he ought to say something special over this.”

He led the way up the bare wooden stairs, followed by the harassed boy, and entered a small dirty room at the top, in the centre of which the master of the Sarah Jane sat to deny visitors, in a pair of socks and last week’s paper.

“Here’s a young gent come to bring you some clothes, cap’n,” said the man, taking the sack from the boy.

“Why didn’t you come before?” growled the captain, who was reading the advertisements.

The man put his hand in the sack, and pulled out the clothes. “What do you think of ’em?” he asked expectantly.

The captain strove vainly to tell him, but his tongue mercifully forsook its office, and dried between his lips. His brain rang with sentences of scorching iniquity, but they got no further.

“Well, say thank you, if you can’t say nothing else,” suggested his tormentor hopefully.

“I couldn’t bring nothing else,” said Tommy hurriedly; “all the things was locked up. I tried to swop ’em and nearly got locked up for it. Put these on and hurry up.”

The captain moistened his lips with his tongue.