then took to it again, and so time went on. Fewer women came at last up
the street, we imagined that with all our care, they had found out that
people were beneath the gratings, and avoided them. The favorite place
was the recess at the workmen's door to the factory at which were two
steps; we could hear but not see when a couple was there, we used then
to go up into the factory and listen at the door. Generally, feeling and
frigging was only going on, bargaining for money first. "Give me another
shilling. Oh! your nails hurt. What a lot of hair you have. What a big
one! Oh! I am coming! Don't spend over my clothes," and so on, we heard
at times.

Meanwhile there was either no servant at my home worthy of a stiff one,
or those who would not take one; and I had no alternative but to frig.
Money my mother again kept from me. What I got, I sent to the poor girl
Martha, who then had not got rid of her big belly; gay women I had
fear of; devoured by desire to get into a woman again, I even looked
longingly at the wife of the foreman who took charge of the house in
which Henry lived, although she was fifty. I recollect seeing her making
my bed one morning, and getting a cock-stand at the sight of the woman
so near a place to lay down on.

CHAPTER IX.

Mrs. Smith.--A brutal husband.--My second adultery.--A
chaste servant.--Road harlots.--A poke in the open.--Use for
a silk handkerchief.--A shilling a tail.--Clapped.

Henry had now much business to attend to, I had none. I used to wander
into the back street just as the men's wives brought them their dinners,
so as to look at them. They were not allowed inside, but if the men
chose to eat inside they could do so, their wives waiting outside. Six
or eight men had their dinners brought, the rest went away. The women
most frequently sat on a door-step, or loitered over the gratings up
which we used to look at night; or squatted down against the wall. I had
once or twice looked up their clothes, but found little inviting, with
the exception of a plump little pair of legs which belonged to a Mrs.
Smith. She looked about twenty-six years of age, her husband twenty
years older, a good workman but a brutal fellow. He bore a bad character
among his fellows, and was thought a brute to his wife. Some said
his wife drank; there was often a row in the street between them at
dinner-time, he used to sit on the door-step and eat his dinner outside,
she standing near hi