is in the meanest and closest of small rooms. Through the ragged
window-curtain, the light of early day steals in from a miserable
court. He lies, dressed, across a large unseemly bed, upon a
bedstead that has indeed given way under the weight upon it. Lying,
also dressed and also across the bed, not longwise, are a Chinaman,
a Lascar, and a haggard woman. The two first are in a sleep or
stupor; the last is blowing at a kind of pipe, to kindle it. And
as she blows, and shading it with her lean hand, concentrates its
red spark of light, it serves in the dim morning as a lamp to show
him what he sees of her.

'Another?' says this woman, in a querulous, rattling whisper.
'Have another?'

He looks about him, with his hand to his forehead.

'Ye've smoked as many as five since ye come in at midnight,' the
woman goes on, as she chronically complains. 'Poor me, poor me, my
head is so bad. Them two come in after ye. Ah, poor me, the
business is slack, is slack! Few Chinamen about the Docks, and
fewer Lascars, and no ships coming in, these say! Here's another
ready for ye, deary. Ye'll remember like a good soul, won't ye,
that the market price is dreffle high just now? More nor three
shillings and sixpence for a thimbleful! And ye'll remember that
nobody but me (and Jack Chinaman t'other side the court; but he
can't do it as well as me) has the true secret of mixing it? Ye'll
pay up accordingly, deary, won't ye?'

She blows at the pipe as she speaks, and, occasionally bubbling at
it, inhales much of its contents.