ed way for hours at a
stretch. On hot summer nights the houses emptied their inhabitants on
to the verandas and footpaths. The children, swarming like rabbits,
played in the middle of the road. With clasped hands they formed a
ring, and circled joyously to a song of childland, the immemorial
rhymes handed down from one generation to another as savages preserve
tribal rites. The fresh, shrill voices broke on the air, mingled with
silvery peals of laughter.

What will you give to know her name,
Know her name, know her name?
What will you give to know her name,
On a cold and frosty morning?

Across the street comes a burst of coarse laughter, and a string of
foul, obscene words on the heels of a jest. And again the childish
trebles would ring on the tainted air:

Green gravel, green gravel,
Your true love is dead;
I send you a message
To turn round your head.

They are ragged and dirty, true children of the gutter, but Romance,
with the cloudy hair and starry eyes, holds them captive for a few
merciful years. Their parents loll against the walls, or squat on the
kerbstone, devouring with infinite relish petty scandals about their
neighbours, or shaking with laughter at some spicy yarn.

About ten o'clock the children are driven indoors with threats and
blows, and put to bed. By eleven the street is quiet, and only gives a
last flicker of life when a drunken man comes swearing down the street,
full of beer, and offering to fight anyone for the pleasure of the
thing. By twelve the street is dead, and the tread of the policeman
echoes with a forlorn sound as if he were walking through a cemetery.

As Mrs Yabsley leaned over the gate, Mrs Swadling caught sight of her,
and, throwing her apron over her head, crossed the street, bent on
gossip. Then Mrs Jones, who had been watching her through the window,
dropped her mending and hurried out.

The three women stood and talked of the weather, talking for talking's
sake as men smoke a pipe in the intervals of work. Presently Mrs
Yabsley looked hard at Mrs Swadling, who was shading her head from the
sun with her apron.

"Wot's the matter with yer eye?" she said, abruptly.

"Nuthin'," said Mrs Swadling, and coloured.

The eye she was shading was black from a recent blow, a present from
her husband, Sam the carter, who came home for his tea, fighting drunk,
as regular as clockwork.

"I thought I 'eard Sam snorin' after tea," said Mrs Jones.