He started out to seek for
work or to beg a breakfast; but luck was against him, and he was
unsuccessful. By noon he had grown more hungry than before, and stood
before a bake-shop for a long time, looking wistfully at the good
things behind the window-panes, and wishing with all his heart he had
a ha'penny to buy a bun.
And yet it was no new thing for Little Tommy Tucker to be hungry, and
he never thought of despairing. He sat down upon a curb-stone, and
thought what was best to be done. Then he remembered he had frequently
begged a meal at one of the cottages that stood upon the outskirts of
the city, and so he turned his steps in that direction.
"I have had neither breakfast nor dinner," he said to himself, "and I
must surely find a supper somewhere, or I shall not sleep much
to-night. It is no fun to be hungry."
So he walked on until he came to a dwelling-house where a goodly
company sat upon a lawn and beneath a veranda. It was a pretty place,
and was the home of a fat alderman who had been married that very day.
The alderman was in a merry mood, and seeing Tommy standing without
the gate he cried to him,
"Come here, my lad, and sing us a song."
Tommy at once entered the grounds, and came to where the fat alderman
was sitting beside his blushing bride.
"Can you sing?" enquired the alderman.
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