“Charming!” chirped the lady, and down pleasant-smelling aisles she led him, pausing to drop an observation about Tommy to a clergyman:  “So glad I came; I have discovered the most delightful little monster called Tommy.”  The clergyman looked after her half in sadness, half sarcastically; he was thinking that he had discovered a monster also.

At present the body of the hall was empty, but its sides were lively with gorging boys, among whom ladies moved, carrying platefuls of good things.  Most of them were sweet women, fighting bravely for these boys, and not at all like Shovel’s patroness, who had come for a sensation.  Tommy falling into her hands, she got it.

Tommy, who had a corner to himself, was lolling in it like a little king, and he not only ordered roast-beef for the awe-struck Shovel, but sent the lady back for salt.  Then he whispered, exultantly:  “Quick, Shovel, feel my pocket” (it bulged with two oranges), “now the inside pocket” (plum-duff), “now my waistcoat pocket” (threepence); “look in my mouth” (chocolates).

When Shovel found speech he began excitedly:  “I love my dear father and my dear—­”

“Gach!” said Tommy, interrupting him contemptuously.  “Repenting ain’t no go, Shovel.  Look at them other coves; none of them has got no money, nor full pockets, and I tell you, it’s ’cos they has repented.”

“Gar on!”

“It’s true, I tells you.  That lady as is my one, she’s called her ladyship, and she don’t care a cuss for boys as has repented,” which of course was a libel, her ladyship being celebrated wherever paragraphs penetrate for having knitted a pair of stockings for the deserving poor.

“When I saw that,” Tommy continued, brazenly, “I bragged ’stead of repenting, and the wuss I says I am, she jest says, ’You little monster,’ and gives me another orange.”

“Then I’m done for,” Shovel moaned, “for I rolled off that ’bout loving my dear father and my dear mother, blast ’em, soon as I seen her.”

He need not let that depress him.  Tommy had told her he would say it, but that it was all flam.

Shovel thought the ideal arrangement would be for him to eat and leave the torking to Tommy.  Tommy nodded.  “I’m full, at any rate,” he said, struggling with his waistcoat.  “Oh, Shovel, I am full!”

Her ladyship returned, and the boys held by their contract, but of the dark character Tommy seems to have been, let not these pages bear the record.  Do you wonder that her ladyship believed him?  On this point we must fight for our Tommy.  You would have believed him.  Even Shovel, who knew, between the bites, that it was all whoppers, listened as to his father reading aloud.  This was because another boy present half believed it for the moment also.  When he described the eerie darkness of the butler’s pantry, he shivered involuntarily, and he shut his eyes once—­ugh!—­that was because he saw the blood spouting out of the butler.  He was turning up his trousers to show the mark of the butler’s boot on his leg when the lady was called away, and then Shovel shook him, saying:  “Darn yer, doesn’t yer know as it’s all your eye?” which brought Tommy to his senses with a jerk.