employ.”

“I think I can find you some.”

“What kind?” said I.

“Why,” said the man, “I think you would do to be my bonnet.”

“Bonnet!” said I; “what is that?”

“Don’t you know?  However, no wonder, as you had never heard of the thimble and pea game, but I will tell you.  We of the game are very much exposed; folks when they have lost their money, as those who play with us mostly do, sometimes uses rough language, calls us cheats, and sometimes knocks our hats over our eyes; and what’s more, with a kick under our table, cause the top deals to fly off; this is the third table I have used this day, the other two being broken by uncivil customers: so we of the game generally like to have gentlemen go about with us to take our part, and encourage us, though pretending to know nothing about us; for example, when the customer says, ‘I’m cheated,’ the bonnet must say, ‘No, you a’n’t, it is all right;’ or, when my hat is knocked over my eyes, the bonnet must square, and say, ‘I never saw the man before in all my life, but I won’t see him ill-used;’ and so, when they kicks at the table, the bonnet must say, ‘I won’t see the table ill-used, such a nice table, too; besides, I want to play myself;’ and then I would say to the bonnet, ‘Thank you, my lord, them that finds, wins;’ and then the bonnet plays, and I lets the bonnet win.”

“In a word,” said I, “the bonnet means the man who covers you, even as the real bonnet covers the head.” [27a]

“Just so,” said the man; “I see you are awake, and would soon make a first-rate bonnet.”

“Bonnet,” said I, musingly; “bonnet; it is metaphorical.”

“Is it?” said the man.

“Yes,” said I, “like the cant words—”

“Bonnet is cant,” said the man; “we of the thimble, as well as all clyfakers and the like, understand cant, as, of course, must every bonnet; so, if you are employed by me, you had better learn it as soon as you can, that we may discourse together without being understood by every one.  Besides covering his principal, a bonnet must have his eyes about him, for the trade of the pea, though a strictly honest one, is not altogether lawful; so it is the duty of the bonnet, if he sees the constable coming, to say, ‘The Gorgio’s welling.’” [27b]

“That is not cant,” said I, “that is the language of the Rommany Chals.” [27c]

“Do you know those people?” said the man.

“Perfectly,” said I, “and their language too.”

“I wish I did,” said the man; “I would give ten pounds and more to know the language of the Rommany Chals.  There’s some of it in the language of the pea and thimble; how it came there I don’t know, but so it is.  I wish I knew it, but it is difficult.  You’ll make a capital bonnet; shall we close?”

“What would the wages be?” I demanded.

“Why, to a first-rate bonnet, as I think you would

prove, I could afford to give from forty to fifty shillings a week.”

“Is it possible?” said I.

“Good wages, a’n’t they?” said the man.

“First-rate,” said I; “bonneting is more profitable than reviewing.”

“Anan?” said the man.

“Or translating; I don’t think the Armenian would have paid me at that rate for translating his Esop.”

“Who is he?” said the man.

“Esop?”

“No, I know what that is, Esop’s cant for a hunchback; but t’other?”

“You should know,” said I.

“Never saw the man in all my life.”

“Yes, you have,” said I, “and felt him too; don’t you remember the individual from whom you took the pocket-book?”

“Oh, that was he?  Well, the less said about that matter the better; I have left off that trade, and taken to this, which is a much better.  Between ourselves, I am not sorry that I did not carry off that pocket-book; if I had, it might have encouraged me in the trade, in which, had I remained, I might have been lagged, sent abroad, as I had been already imprisoned; so I determined to leave it off at all hazards, though I was hard up, not having a penny in the world.”

“And wisely resolved,” said I; “it was a bad and dangerous trade; I wonder you should ever have embraced it.”

“It is all very well talking,” said the man, “but there is a reason for everything; I am the son of a Jewess, by a military officer,”—and then the man

told me his story.  I shall not repeat the man’s story, it was a poor one, a vile one; at last he observed, “So that affair which you know of determined me to leave the filching trade, and take up with a more honest and safe one; so at last I thought of the pea and thimble, but I wanted funds, especially to pay for lessons at the hands of a master, for I knew little about it.”

“Well,” said I, “how did you get over that difficulty?”

“Why,” said the man, “I thought I should never have got over it.  What funds could I raise?  I had nothing to sell; the few clothes I had I wanted, for we of the thimble must always appear decent, or nobody would come near us.  I was at my wits’ end; at last I got over my difficulty in the strangest way in the world.”

“What was that?”

“By an old thing which I had picked up some time before—a book.”

“A book?” said I.

“Yes, which I had taken out of your lordship’s pocket one day as you were walking the streets in a great hurry.  I thought it was a pocket-book at first, full of bank-notes, perhaps,” continued he, laughing.  “It was well for me, however, that it was not, for I should have soon spent the notes; as it was, I had flung the old thing down with an oath, as soon as I brought it home.  When I was so hard up, however, after the affair with that friend of yours, I took it up one day, and thought I might make something by it to support myself a day with.  Chance or something else led me into a grand shop; there was a man there who seemed to be the master, talking to a jolly, portly old gentleman, who seemed

to be a country squire.  Well, I went up to the first, and offered it for sale; he took the book, opened it at the title-page, and then all of a sudden his eyes glistened, and he showed it to the fat, jolly gentleman, and his eyes glistened too, and I heard him say ‘How singular!’ and then the two talked together in a speech I didn’t understand—I rather thought it was French, at any rate it wasn’t cant; and presently the first asked me what I would take for the book.  Now I am not altogether a fool, nor am I blind, and I had narrowly marked all that passed, and it came into my head that now was the time for making a man of myself, at any rate I could lose nothing by a little confidence; so I looked the man boldly in the face, and said, ‘I will have five guineas for that book, there a’n’t such another in the whole world.’  ‘Nonsense,’ said the first man, ‘there are plenty of them, there have been nearly fifty editions, to my knowledge; I will give you five shillings.’