"Lucky fer 'im it's daylight, or they'd tickle 'is ribs with their boots,"
said Mrs Jones.

"Jonah and Chook's at the bottom o' that," said Mrs Swadling, looking hard
at Mrs Yabsley.

"Ah, the devil an' 'is 'oof!" said Mrs Yabsley grimly, and was silent.

The sailor disappeared round the corner, and five minutes later the Push
had slipped back, one by one, to their places under the veranda.
Mrs Jones was in the middle of a story:

"'Er breath was that strong, it nearly knocked me down, an' so I sez
to 'er, 'Mark my words, I'll pocket yer insults no longer, an' you in
a temperance lodge. I'll make it my bizness to go to the sekertary this
very day, an' tell 'im of yer goin's on.' An' she sez...w'y, there she is
again," cried Mrs Jones, as she caught the sound of a shrill voice,
high-pitched and quarrelsome. The women craned their necks to look.

A woman of about forty, drunken, bedraggled, dressed in dingy black,
was pacing up and down the pavement in front of the barber's. She blinked
like a drunken owl, and stepped high on the level footpath as if it were
mountainous. And without looking at anything, she threw a string of
insults at the barber, hiding behind the partition in his shop. For seven
years she had passed as his wife, and then, one day, sick of her drunken
bouts, he had turned her out, and married Flash Kate, the ragpicker's
daughter. Sloppy Mary had accepted her lot with resignation, and went out
charring for a living; but whenever she had a drop too much she made for
the barber's, forgetting by a curious lapse of memory that it was no
longer her home. And as usual the barber's new wife had pushed her into