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Jonah by Louis Stone
page 28 of 278 (10%)
they'd all die rich men. There's Waxy Collins. Last week 'e told 'is
father 'e'd 'ave ter keep 'im till 'e was twenty-one 'cause of the law,
an' the old fool believed 'im. An' little Joe Crutch, as used ter come
'ere beggin' a spoonful of drippin' fer 'is mother, come 'ome drunk the
other night so natural, that 'is mother mistook 'im fer 'is father,
an' landed 'im on the ear with 'er fist. An' 'im the apple of 'er eye,
as the sayin' is. It's 'ard ter be a mother in Cardigan Street. Yer
girls are mothers before their bones are set, an' yer sons are dodgin'
the p'liceman round the corner before they're in long trousers."

It was rare for Mrs Yabsley to touch on her private sorrows, and there
was an embarrassing silence. But suddenly, from the corner of Pitt
Street, appeared a strange figure of a man, roaring out a song in the
voice of one selling fish. Every head turned.

"'Ello," said Mrs Jones, "Froggy's on the job to-day."

The singer was a Frenchman with a wooden leg, dressed as a sailor. As he
hopped slowly down the street with the aid of a crutch, his grizzled beard
and scowling face turned mechanically to right and left, sweeping the
street with threatening eyes that gave him the look of a retired pirate,
begging the tribute that he had taken by force in better days. The song
ended abruptly, and he wiped the sweat from his face with an enormous
handkerchief. Then he began another.

The women were silent, greedily drinking in the strange, foreign sounds,
touched for a moment with the sense of things forlorn and far away.
The singer still roared, though the tune was caressing, languishing,
a love song. But his eyes rolled fiercely, and his moustache seemed
to bristle with anger.
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