wanted now." And, taking up his whip, he prepared to drive away.

"How long have they been as bad as this?"

The cabman dropped his hand again, as though glad to rest it, and
answered incoherently:

"Thirty-five year I've been drivin' a cab."

And, sunk again in contemplation of his horse's tail, he could only be
roused by many questions to express himself, having, as it seemed, no
knowledge of the habit.

"I don't blame the taxis, I don't blame nobody. It's come on us, that's
what it has. I left the wife this morning with nothing in the house.
She was saying to me only yesterday: 'What have you brought home the last
four months?' 'Put it at six shillings a week,' I said. 'No,' she said,
'seven.' Well, that's right--she enters it all down in her book."

"You are really going short of food?"

The cabman smiled; and that smile between those two deep hollows was
surely as strange as ever shone on a human face.

"You may say that," he said. "Well, what does it amount to? Before I
picked you up, I had one eighteen-penny fare to-day; and yesterday I took
five shillings. And I've got seven bob a day to pay for the cab, and
that's low, too. There's many and many a proprietor that's broke and
gone--every bit as bad as us. They let us down as easy as ever they can;
you can't get blood from a stone, can you?" Once again he smiled. "I'm