Though Alice oft would pity him,
So lowly and forlorn.

The cross-grained cook was very angry at the
kindness shown to poor Dick by Alice, and she
treated him more roughly than before, and sneered
at him for having sent his cat to sea. ‘Do you
suppose,’ she said, ‘that your cat will sell for
suiicient to buy a stick wherewith I may thrash
you?’

At length poor Whittington could endure this harsh
treatment no longer, and he resolved that he would
run away and seek his luck elsewhere. So he
packed up his few goods in a bundle, and started
one morning, All Saints’ Day, which is the 1st of
November, and he walked as far as Holloway;
which was then all fields, and there were no houses.
There he sat himself down on a stone, which to
this day remains, and is called ‘Dick Whittington’s
Stone,’! and he was very sad to think how solitary
he was in the world, and how badly he had fared.
Moreover he could not tell which way he should go.
While he was thus considering, the bells of Bow
Church, which at that time were only six, began to
ring for service, and their sound, borne on the
breeze, seemed to say to him—

‘Turn a-gain, Whitt-ing-ton,
Thrice Lord Mayor of Lon-don.’

The same words would come with the chime of
the bells again, and over again into his head. He
tried to laugh and began to cry. And still the
bells rang on—

{Turn again, Whittington,
Thrice Lord Mayor of London.’

He shook his head and stood up, and took a few

1 It now forms part of a lamp-post.
127

WHIT-
TINGTON
AND HIS
CAT