The Model Policeman and The Model Servant Girl

Spring-Heel’d Jack: The Terror of London. By Alfred Coates. 1867

Chapter XXIII.

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He had just recovered one of those painful shocks to his feelings— those feelings, we mean, which lay in the stomach— and made the acquaintance of a natty little country girl, who had just put on the badge of servitude at the Misses Snookers’ academy, a short distance from Camberwell church.

If Bristles’ heart ever beat for another, it did for Peggy Mittern, and she not only gladdened his soul with her sweet smiles, but filled his belly night after night with the little tit-bits which her mistress’s kitchen or larder afforded.

Half a cold fowl at one time found its way from the larder into Johnny’s pocket. At another, a nice slice of roasted beef or mutton, wrapped in a clean piece of newspaper, would stare him full in the face as he stooped to brush the dirt, from the bottom of his trowsers before the garden gate of the academy.

What could Bristles do but pick it up, especially when it was accompanied with a sly wink from a laughing black eye and a smile from two pouting lips.

But somehow or other the Misses Snookers—disagreeable and suspicious old maids— would always look out of the door or window as he neared the house, and gradually the little luxuries disappeared

Johnny waxed wrath at this, and he felt an inexpressible desire to lock up or move on the subjects of his annoyance.

But the Misses Snookers were law-abiding persons, and Johnny Bristles was far too wise a man to commit a breach of the peace himself, although his hand would rest upon the handle of his staff, and a muttered curse escape his lips as he caught sight of one or other of the ladies.