“Come on, can’t yer? What a lazybones yer are, Charlotte.”
“It’s a heavy load, I can tell you,” said the female, coming up, almost breathless with fatigue.
“Heavy! What are yer talking about? What are yer made for?” rejoined the male traveller, changing his own little bundle as he spoke, to the other shoulder. “Oh, there yer are, resting again! Well, if yer ain’t enough to tire anybody’s patience out, I don’t know what is!”
“Is it much farther?” asked the woman, resting herself against a bank, and looking up with the perspiration streaming from her face.
“Much farther! Yer as good as there,” said the long-legged tramper, pointing out before him. “Look there! Those are the lights of London.”
“They’re a good two mile off, at least,” said the woman despondingly.
“Never mind whether they’re two mile off, or twenty,” said Noah Claypole; for he it was; “but get up and come on, or I’ll kick yer, and so I give yer notice.”
As Noah’s red nose grew redder with anger, and as he crossed the road while speaking, as if fully prepared to put his threat into execution, the woman rose without any further remark, and trudged onward by his side.
“Where do you mean to stop for the night, Noah?” she asked, after they had walked a few hundred yards.
“How should I know?” replied Noah, whose temper had been considerably impaired by walking.
“Near, I hope,” said Charlotte.
“No, not near,” replied Mr. Claypole. “There! Not near; so don’t think it.”
“Why not?”
“When I tell yer that I don’t mean to do a thing, that’s enough without any why or because either,” replied Mr. Claypole with dignity.
“Well, you needn’t be so cross,” said his companion.
“A pretty thing it would be, wouldn’t it, to go and stop at the very first public-house outside the town, so that Sowerberry, if he come up after us, might poke in his old nose, and have us taken back in a cart with handcuffs on,” said Mr. Claypole in a jeering tone. “No! I shall go and lose myself among the narrowest streets I can find, and not stop till we come to the very out-of-the-wayest house I can set eyes on. “Cod, yer may thanks yer stars I’ve got a head; for if we hadn’t gone, at first, the wrong road a purpose, and come back across country, yer’d have been locked up hard and fast a week ago, my lady. And serve yer right for being a fool.”
“I know I ain’t as cunning as you are,” replied Charlotte; “but don’t put all the blame on me, and say I should have been locked up. You would have been if I had been, any way.”
“Yer took the money from the till, yer know yer did,” said Mr. Claypole.
“I took it for you, Noah, dear,” rejoined Charlotte.
“Did I keep it?” asked Mr. Claypole.
“No; you trusted in me, and let me carry it like a dear, and so you are,” said the lady, chucking him under the chin, and drawing her arm through his.
This was indeed the case; but as it was not Mr. Claypole’s habit to repose a blind and foolish confidence in anybody, it should be observed, in justice to that gentleman, that he had trusted Charlotte to this extent, in order that, if they were pursued, the money might be found on her: which would leave him an opportunity of asserting his innocence of any theft, and would greatly facilitate his chances of escape. Of course, he entered at this juncture, into no explanation of his motives, and they walked on very lovingly together.
In pursuance of this cautious plan, Mr. Claypole went on, without halting, until he arrived at the Angel at Islington, where he wisely judged, from the crowd of passengers and number of vehicles, that London began in earnest. Just pausing to observe which appeared the most crowded streets, and consequently the most to be avoided, he crossed into Saint John’s Road, and was soon deep in the obscurity of the intricate and dirty ways, which, lying between Gray’s Inn Lane and Smithfield, render that part of the town one of the lowest and worst that improvement has left in the midst of London.