"Yes, 'e was; but 'e woke up about twelve, an' give me beans 'cause
I'd let 'im sleep till the pubs was shut."

"An' yer laid 'im out wi' the broom-handle, I s'pose?"

"No fear," said Mrs Swadling. "I ran down the yard, an' 'ollered blue
murder."

"Well," said Mrs Yabsley, reflectively, "an 'usband is like the
weather, or a wart on yer nose. It's no use quarrelling with it. If
yer don't like it, yer've got ter lump it. An' if yer believe all yer
'ear, everybody else 'as got a worse."

She looked down the street, and saw Jonah and Chook, with a few others
of the Push, sunning themselves in the morning air. Her face darkened.

"I see the Push 'ave got Jimmy Sinclair at last. Only six months ago
'e went ter Sunday school reg'lar, an' butter wouldn't melt in 'is
mouth. Well, if smokin' cigarettes, an' spittin', and swearin' was 'ard
work, they'd all die rich men. There's Waxy Collins. Last week 'e
told 'is father 'e'd 'ave ter keep 'im till 'e was twenty-one 'cause of
the law, an' the old fool believed 'im. An' little Joe Crutch, as used
ter come 'ere beggin' a spoonful of drippin' fer 'is mother, come 'ome
drunk the other night so natural, that 'is mother mistook 'im fer 'is
father, an' landed 'im on the ear with 'er fist. An' 'im the apple of
'er eye, as the sayin' is. It's 'ard ter be a mother in Cardigan
Street. Yer girls are mothers before their bones are set, an' yer sons
are dodgin' the p'liceman round the corner before they're in long
trousers."

It was rare for Mrs Yabsley to touch on her private sorrows, and there
was an embarrassing silence. But suddenly, from the corner of Pitt
Street, appeared a strange figure of a man, roaring out a song in the
voice of one selling fish. Every head turned.

"'Ello," said Mrs Jones, "Froggy's on the job to-day."

The singer was a Frenchman with a wooden leg, dressed as a sailor. As
he hopped slowly down the street with the aid of a crutch, his grizzled
beard and scowling face turned mechanically to right and left, sweeping
the street with threatening eyes that gave him the look of a retired
pirate, begging the tribute that he had taken by force in better days.
The song ended abruptly, and he wiped the sweat from his face with an
enormous handkerchief. Then he began another.

The women were silent, greedily drinking in the strange, foreign
sounds, touched for a moment with the sense of things forlorn and far
away. The singer still roared, though the