A carnival night was dying out.

Quite a number of maskers, grotesquely and shabbily bedecked, had rushed
out of the low dance-houses in the Guildhall Ward, and were roaring out
staves of songs as they crossed the square. But on catching sight of a
second troop of mummers running about the water-side, the first party
stopped to wait for the others to come up, rejoicing, with many a shout,
in hopes of one of those verbal battles of slang and smutty talk which
made Vade so illustrious.

This mob--nearly all its members half seas over, soon swollen by the many
people who have to be up early to follow their crafts--suddenly
concentrated in one of the corners of the square, so that a pale,
deformed girl, who was going that way, was caught in the human tide. This
was Mother Bunch. Up with the lark, she was hurrying to receive some work
from her employer. Remembering how a mob had treated her when she had
been arrested in the streets only the day before, by mistake, the poor
work-girl's fears may be imagined when she was now surrounded by the
revellers against her will. But, spite of all her efforts--very feeble,
alas!--she could not stir a step, for the band of merry-makers, newly
arriving, had rushed in among the others, shoving some of them aside,
pushing far into the mass, and sweeping Mother Bunch--who was in their
way--clear over to the crowd around the public-house.

The new-comers were much finer rigged out than the others, for they
belonged to the gay, turbulent class which goes frequently to the
Chaumiere, the Prado, the Colisee, and other more or less rowdyish haunts
of waltzers, made up generally of students, shop-girls, and counter
skippers, clerks, unfortunates, etc., etc.