as you'll see. He often used to bring her
in after that. Who she was and what she was he didn't know, and she
didn't know, so there was a pair of them. She'd run away from an old
woman down Limehouse way, who used to beat her. That was all she could
tell him. He got her a lodging with an old woman, who had an attic in
the same house where he slept--when it would run to that--taught her to
yell "Speshul!" and found a corner for her. There ain't room for boys
and girls in the Mile-End Road. They're either kids down there or
they're grown-ups. "Kipper" and "Carrots"--as we named her--looked upon
themselves as sweethearts, though he couldn't have been more than
fifteen, and she barely twelve; and that he was regular gone on her
anyone could see with half an eye. Not that he was soft about it--that
wasn't his style. He kept her in order, and she had just to mind, which
I guess was a good thing for her, and when she wanted it he'd use his
hand on her, and make no bones about it. That's the way among that
class. They up and give the old woman a friendly clump, just as you or
me would swear at the missus, or fling a boot-jack at her. They don't
mean anything more.

I left the coffee shop later on for a place in the city, and saw nothing
more of them for five years. When I did it was at a restaurant in Oxford
Street--one of those amatoor shows run by a lot of women, who know
nothing about the business, and spend the whole day gossiping and
flirting--"love-shops," I call 'em. There was a yellow-haired lady
manageress who never heard you when you spoke to her, 'cause she was
always trying to hear what some seedy old fool would be whispering to her
across the counter. Then there were waitresses, and their notion of
waiting was to spend an hour talking to a twopenny cup of coffee, and to
look haughty and insulted whenever anybody as really wanted something
ventured to ask for it. A frizzle-haired cashier used to make love all
day out of her pigeon-hole with the two box-office boys from the Oxford
Music Hall, who took it turn and turn about. Sometimes she'd leave off
to take a customer's money, and sometimes she wouldn't. I've been to
some rummy places in my time; and a waiter ain't the blind owl as he's
supposed to be. But never in my life have I seen so much love-making,
not all at once, as used to go on in that place. It was a dismal, gloomy
sort of hole, and spoony couples seemed to scent it out by instinct, a