the laziest--knit while they talk: and from nine o'clock onwards the
alley-ways that pass for streets were filled with women knitting hard
and talking at the top of their voices. The men and the cats dozed.

Down by the boats, up to noon the boys had things all their own way,
vying in feats of valour. But soon after the dinner-hour the girls
asserted themselves by starting an Ambulance Corps, and with details
so realistic that not a few of the male combatants hauled out of
battle on pretence of wounds and in search of better fun.


Nicholas Nanjivell, "mooning" by the bridge twelve paces from his
door, sharpening his jack-knife upon a soft parapet-stone that was
reported to bring cutlery to an incomparable edge and had paid for
its reputation, being half worn away--Nicholas Nanjivell, leaning his
weight on the parapet, to ease the pain in his leg--Nicholas
Nanjivell, gloomily contemplating his knife and wishing he could
plunge it into the heart of a man who stood behind a counter behind a
door which stood in view beyond the bridge-end--Nicholas Nanjivell,
nursing his own injury to the exclusion of any that might threaten
Europe--glanced up and beheld his neighbour Penhaligon's children,
Young 'Bert and 'Beida (Zobeida), approach by the street from the
Quay bearing between them a stretcher, composed of two broken paddles
and part of an old fishing-net, and on the stretcher, covered by a
tattered pilot-jack, a small form--their brother 'Biades
(Alcibiades), aged four. It gave him a scare.

"Lor sake!" said he, hastily shutting and pocketing his knife.
"What you got there?"