He
only begged just enough to save himself, for the laws against
mendicancy were stringent, and the penalties heavy; so he put in a
good deal of his time listening to good Father Andrew's charming old
tales and legends about giants and fairies, dwarfs and genii, and
enchanted castles, and gorgeous kings and princes. His head grew to be
full of these wonderful things, and many a night as he lay in the dark
on his scant and offensive straw, tired, hungry, and smarting from a
thrashing, he unleashed his imagination and soon forgot his aches
and pains in delicious picturings to himself of the charmed life of
a petted prince in a regal palace. One desire came in time to haunt
him day and night; it was to see a real prince, with his own eyes.
He spoke of it once to some of his Offal Court comrades; but they
jeered him and scoffed him so unmercifully that he was glad to keep
his dream to himself after that.
He often read the priest's old books and got him to explain and
enlarge upon them. His dreamings and readings worked certain changes
in him by and by. His dream-people were so fine that he grew to lament
his shabby clothing and his dirt, and to wish to be clean and better
clad. He went on playing in the mud just the same, and enjoying it,
too; but instead of splashing around in the Thames solely for the
fun of it, he began to find an added value in it because of the
washings and cleansings it afforded.
Tom could always find something going on around the Maypole in
Cheapside, and at the fairs; and now and then he and the rest of
London had a chance to see a military parade when some famous
unfortunate was carried prisoner to the Tower, by land or boat.
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