Page:The little blue devil (IA littlebluedevil00mackiala).pdf/33

pleased if the boy had asked to stay with him, though he would not have agreed to that, being tired of his toy.

“Here’s a hundred piastres,” he said; “it will last you till you find someone—be sure of that. You will fall on your feet—you are light enough.”

Tony thanked him, staring sombrely.

“You’ve always been on your feet,” he was thinking. “You never had to fall.”

He went out aimlessly into the street and faced black despair. Not that he felt poverty-stricken; on the contrary, he had never possessed so much money in one lump—something over a pound—but nobody wanted him. It came home to him more than ever it had before.

He knew that he must leave that place (and he had loved Shepheard’s too!) and find something to do quickly, for the money would not last. Still, he was older now, and more valuable—and perhaps someone would want a guide; he knew as much as some guides!—and a hundred piastres was quite a lot to go on with. . . .

It was nine full years before Tony dared let his mind dwell on the fortnight which followed. No tourist did want a guide; they were extremely suspicious of a European boy who came cadging like that. Some tried to drive him away with their umbrellas; he backed from them, showing his teeth in a silent snarl, like a dog you strike at as you drive past it. The tourists not unnaturally congratulated themselves on not having softened towards that beggar. And gold is hard for a little boy to change, especially as he gets shabbier and hungrier-looking. The man who did change one of his fifty-piastre pieces at last gave him much less than the full value, but Tony was glad to take anything by then. He got food—plenty of bad food—and lodging for the night. And when he woke he found that the other fifty-piastres had disappeared. He knew that it had been stolen, but said