Dodger

the gloom, Dodger smiled and went to sleep, dreaming of golden hair.
    In the morning, as clean as he could be, he headed to the house of Mister Mayhew. By daylight, the man’s house looked pretty good; not a palace, but the place of somebody who had enough money to be called a gentleman. The whole street looked like that, smart, ordered and clean. There was even a policeman patrolling it, and much to Dodger’s surprise the policeman gave him a little salute as they passed. It wasn’t anything much, just a flick of the fingers, but up until now a policeman in a place like this would have told him to go somewhere else sharpish. Emboldened, Dodger remembered the way that Charlie talked, and saluted the constable back, saying, ‘Good morning, Officer, what a fine day it is to be sure.’
    Nothing happened! The copper strolled slowly past him and that was that. Blimey! In a hopeful mood, Dodger found the house. He had learned at an early age how to hang about the back doors of houses on the swell streets, and also – and this was important – to get known as a spritely lad. He had realized that if you were an urchin, then it might help to treat it as a vocation and get really good at it; if you wanted to be a successful urchin you needed to study how to urch. It was as simple as that. And if you are going to urch, then you had to be something like an actor. You had to know how to be chatty to everybody – the butlers and the cooks; the housemaids; even the coachmen – and in short become the cheerful chappie, always a card, known to everybody. It was an act and he was the star. It wasn’t a path to fame and fortune, but it certainly wasn’t the road to Tyburn Tree and the long drop. No, safety lay in having one talent that you can call your own, and his lay in being Dodger, Dodger to the hilt. So now he walked round to the back door, hoping he might perhaps run into Mrs Quickly the cook again and come away once more with a pie or another piece of mutton.
    The door was opened by a maid, who said, ‘Yes, sir?’
    Dodger straightened himself up and said, ‘I’m here to see Mister Mayhew. I believe he is expecting me, my name is Dodger.’
    No sooner had he said this than there was a clang from somewhere beyond, and the maid panicked a little, as maids do (especially when they met Dodger’s cheerful grin), but she visibly relaxed as she was replaced by Dodger’s old friend Mrs Quickly, who looked him up and down critically and said, ‘My word, ain’t you the toff and no mistake! Pray excuse me if I do not curtsey, on account of me being all but up to my armpits in giblets.’
    A moment later the cook came back to the door again, this time unencumbered by the bits of the insides of animals. She shooed away the maid, saying, ‘Me and Mister Dodger is going to have a little chat, so go and see to the pig knuckles, girl.’ Then she gave Dodger a hug involving a certain amount of giblet, wiped him down and said, ‘You are a hero of the hour, my little pumpkin, yes indeed, they were talking about it at breakfast! It seems that you, you little scallywag, single-handedly stopped that
Morning Chronicle
being overrun by robbers last night!’ She gave Dodger a saucy smile, and said, ‘Well, I thought to myself, if that is the selfsame young man I met the other day, then the only way he would stop anything being stolen would be to put his hands behind his back. But now it appears that you fought a battle with some robbers and chased them to kingdom come, so they say. Just fancy that! Next thing you know they will be asking you to be the Lord Mayor. If that is so I would like you to take me as your Lady Mayoress – don’t worry, I’ve been married lots of times and know how it is done.’ She laughed again at his expression and, more soberly, said, ‘Well done, lad. We’ll get the girl to take you upstairs to the family, and you be sure to come down here again when you go, because I might have a little bundle of food for you.’
    Dodger followed the maid up a flight of stone stairs to a door, to the magic green baize door between the people who clean the floors and those people who walk on the floors – the upstairs and the downstairs of the world. Actually, what he found was a kind of pandemonium, with a husband and wife as unwilling referees in a dispute between two boys over who had broken whose toy soldier.
    Mister Mayhew grabbed him and nodded to his wife, who could only smile frantically at Dodger from