It would have fared ill with Mrs. Sandys now, had her standoffishness to
her neighbors been repaid in the same coin, but they were full of
sympathy, especially Shovel's old girl, from whom she had often drawn
back offensively on the stair, but who nevertheless waddled up several
times a day with savory messes, explaining, when Mrs. Sandys sniffed,
that it was not the tapiocar but merely the cup that smelt of gin. When
Tommy returned the cups she noticed not only that they were suspiciously
clean, but that minute particles of the mess were adhering to his nose
and chin (perched there like shipwrecked mariners on a rock, just out of
reach of the devouring element), and after this discovery she brought
two cupfuls at a time. She was an Irish, woman who could have led the
House of Commons, and in walking she seldom raised her carpet shoes from
the ground, perhaps because of her weight, for she had an expansive
figure that bulged in all directions, and there were always bits of her
here and there that she had forgotten to lace. Round the corner was a
delightful eating-house, through whose window you were allowed to gaze
at the great sweating dumplings, and Tommy thought Shovel's mother was
rather like a dumpling that had not been a complete success. If he ever
knew her name he forgot it. Shovel, who probably had another name also,
called her his old girl or his old woman or his old lady, and it was a
sight to see her chasing him across the street when she was in liquor,
and boastful was Shovel of the way she could lay on, and he was partial
to her too, and once when she was giving it to him pretty strong with
the tongs, his father (who followed many professions, among them that of
finding lost dogs), had struck her and told her to drop it, and then
Shovel sauced his father for interfering, saying she should lick him as
long as she blooming well liked, which made his father go for him with a
dog-collar; and that was how Shovel lost his eye.