by L. T. Meade
CHAPTER I.
THE THREE FRIENDS.
A child and a dog sat very close to the fast-expiring embers of a smallfire in a shabby London attic.
The dog was very old, with palsied, shaking limbs, eyes half-blind, and anappearance about his whole person of almost disreputable ugliness anddecrepitude, He was a large white-and-liver-colored dog, of no particularbreed, and certainly of no particular beauty. Never, even in his best days,could this dog have been at all good-looking. The child who crouched closeto him was small and thin. He was a pale child, with big, sorrowful eyes,and that shrunken appearance of the whole little frame which proclaims buttoo clearly that bread-and-milk have not sufficiently nourished it.
He sat very close to the old dog, half-supporting himself against him; hishead was bent forward on his little chest--he was half-asleep.
A little apart from the dog and the sleepy child stood a very bright boy, aboy with rosy cheeks and sparkling eye. He poised himself for a moment onone leg, kicked off the snow from his ragged trousers with the other, thenflinging his cap and an old broom into a corner of the attic, he sang outin a clear, ringing tone:
"Hillow! Pepper and Trusty, is that h'all the welcome yer 'ave to give to afeller?"
At the first sound of his voice the dog feebly wagged his tail and thelittle child started to his feet.
"Hillow!" he answered with a pitiful attempt at the elder boy'scheerfulness; "I 'opes as yer 'ave brought h'in some supper, Tom."
"See yere," said Tom, just turning back a morsel of his ragged jacket toshow what really was still a pocket. This pocket bunched out now in a mostsuggestive manner, and Pepper, thrusting in his tiny hand, pulled from itthe following heterogeneous mixture: an old bone--very bare of even thepretense of meat; an orange; some nuts; a piece of moldy bread, and a nicelittle crisp loaf; also twopence and a halfpenny.
"Ain't it prime, Pepper?" said the elder boy. "Yere's the bone for oldTrusty, and the broken bread, and the pretty little loaf, and the nuts, andth' orange, for you and me."
"Oh, Tom! where did you get the nuts?"
"They were throwing 'em to a dancing monkey, and an old 'oman gave me ahandful h'all to myself. I say, didn't I clutch 'em!"
"Well, let's crunch 'em up now," said Pepper, whose face had grown quitebright with anticipation.
"And give Trusty his bone," said Tom. "I picked it h'out o' the gutter, andwashed it at the pump. 'Tis a real juicy bone--full o' marrow. Yere, oldfeller! Don't he move his lazy h'old sides quickly now, Pepper?"
"Yes," said Pepper, clapping his tiny hands.