Chapter XI. Come with Me

The Lost Prince

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

When they came back from the graveyard, The Rat was silent all
the way. He was thinking of what had happened and of what lay before
him. He was, in fact, thinking chiefly that nothing lay before
him--nothing. The certainty of that gave his sharp, lined face new
lines and sharpness which made it look pinched and hard.

He had nothing before but a corner in a bare garret in which he
could find little more than a leaking roof over his head--when he was
not turned out into the street. But, if policemen asked him where he
lived, he could say he lived in Bone Court with his father. Now he
couldn't say it.

He got along very well on his crutches, but he was rather tired
when they reached the turn in the street which led in the direction
of his old haunts. At any rate, they were haunts he knew, and he
belonged to them more than he belonged elsewhere. The Squad stopped
at this particular corner because it led to such homes as they
possessed. They stopped in a body and looked at The Rat, and The Rat
stopped also. He swung himself to Loristan's side, touching his hand
to his forehead.

"Thank you, sir," he said. "Line and salute, you chaps!" And
the Squad stood in line and raised their hands also. "Thank you,
sir. Thank you, Marco. Good-by."

"Where are you going?" Loristan asked.

"I don't know yet," The Rat answered, biting his lips.

He and Loristan looked at each other a few moments in silence.
Both of them were thinking very hard. In The Rat's eyes there was a
kind of desperate adoration. He did not know what he should do when
this man turned and walked away from him. It would be as if the sun
itself had dropped out of the heavens--and The Rat had not thought of
what the sun meant before.

But Loristan did not turn and walk away. He looked deep into
the lad's eyes as if he were searching to find some certainty. Then
he said in a low voice, "You know how poor I am."

"I--I don't care!" said The Rat. "You--you're like a king to
me. I'd stand up and be shot to bits if you told me to do it."

"I am so poor that I am not sure I can give you enough dry bread
to eat--always. Marco and Lazarus and I are often hungry. Sometimes
you might have nothing to sleep on but the floor. But I can find a
place for you if I take you with me," said Loristan. "Do you know
what I mean by a place?"

"Yes, I do," answered The Rat. "It's what I've never had before
--sir."

What he knew was that it meant some bit of space, out of all the
world, where he would have a sort of right to stand, howsoever poor
and bare it might be.

"I'm not used to beds or to food enough," he said. But he did
not dare to insist too much on that "place." It seemed too great a
thing to be true.

Loristan took his arm.

"Come with me," he said. "We won't part. I believe you are to
be trusted."

The Rat turned quite white in a sort of anguish of joy. He had
never cared for any one in his life. He had been a sort of young
Cain, his hand against every man and every man's hand against him.
And during the last twelve hours he had plunged into a tumultuous
ocean of boyish hero-worship. This man seemed like a sort of god to
him. What he had said and done the day before, in what had been
really The Rat's hours of extremity, after that appalling night--the
way he had looked into his face and understood it all, the talk at
the table when he had listened to him seriously, comprehending and
actually respecting his plans and rough maps; his silent
companionship as they followed the pauper hearse together--these
things were enough to make the lad longingly ready to be any sort of
servant or slave to him if he might see and be spoken to by him even
once or twice a day.

The Squad wore a look of dismay for a moment, and Loristan saw
it.

"I am going to take your captain with me," he said. "But he
will come back to Barracks. So will Marco."

"Will yer go on with the game?" asked Cad, as eager spokesman.
"We want to go on being the `Secret Party.' "

"Yes, I'll go on," The Rat answered. "I won't give it up.
There's a lot in the papers to-day."

So they were pacified and went on their way, and Loristan and
Lazarus and Marco and The Rat went on theirs also.

"Queer thing is," The Rat thought as they walked together, "I'm
a bit afraid to speak to him unless he speaks to me first. Never
felt that way before with any one."

He had jeered at policemen and had impudently chaffed "swells,"
but he felt a sort of secret awe of this man, and actually liked the
feeling.

"It's as if I was a private and he was commander-in-chief," he
thought. "That's it."

Loristan talked to him as they went. He was simple enough in
his statements of the situation. There was an old sofa in Marco's
bedroom. It was narrow and hard, as Marco's bed itself was, but The
Rat could sleep upon it. They would share what food they had. There
were newspapers and magazines to be read. There were papers and
pencils to draw new maps and plans of battles. There was even an old
map of Samavia of Marco's which the two boys could study together as
an aid to their game. The Rat's eyes began to have points of fire in
them.

"If I could see the papers every morning, I could fight the
battles on paper by night," he said, quite panting at the incredible
vision of splendor. Were all the kingdoms of the earth going to be
given to him? Was he going to sleep without a drunken father near
him?

Was he going to have a chance to wash himself and to sit at a
table and hear people say "Thank you," and "I beg pardon," as if they
were using the most ordinary fashion of speech? His own father,
before he had sunk into the depths, had lived and spoken in this
way.

"When I have time, we will see who can draw up the best plans,"
Loristan said.

"Do you mean that you'll look at mine then--when you have time?"
asked The Rat, hesitatingly. "I wasn't expecting that."

"Yes," answered Loristan, "I'll look at them, and we'll talk
them over."

As they went on, he told him that he and Marco could do many
things together. They could go to museums and galleries, and Marco
could show him what he himself was familiar with.

"My father said you wouldn't let him come back to Barracks when
you found out about it," The Rat said, hesitating again and growing
hot because he remembered so many ugly past days. "But--but I swear
I won't do him any harm, sir. I won't!"

"When I said I believed you could be trusted, I meant several
things," Loristan answered him. "That was one of them. You're a new
recruit. You and Marco are both under a commanding officer." He
said the words because he knew they would elate him and stir his
blood.