"W'en a woman takes to drink, she's found a short cut to 'ell, an' lets
everybody know it," said Mrs Yabsley, briefly. "But this won't git my
work done," and she tucked up her sleeves and went in.

The Push, bent on killing time, and despairing of any fresh diversion in
the street, dispersed slowly, one by one, to meet again at night.

The Cardigan Street Push, composed of twenty or thirty young men of the
neighbourhood, was a social wart of a kind familiar to the streets of
Sydney. Originally banded together to amuse themselves at other people's
expenses, the Push found new cares and duties thrust upon them, the chief
of which was chastising anyone who interfered with their pleasures.
Their feats ranged from kicking an enemy senseless, and leaving him for
dead, to wrecking hotel windows with blue metal, if the landlord had
contrived to offend them. Another of their duties was to check ungodly
pride in the rival Pushes by battering them out of shape with fists and
blue metal at regular intervals.

They stood for the scum of the streets. How they lived was a mystery,
except to people who kept fowls, or forgot to lock their doors at night.
A few were vicious idlers, sponging on their parents for a living at
twenty years of age; others simply mischievous lads, with a trade at their
fingers' ends, if they chose to work. A few were honest, unless
temptation stared them too hard in the face. On such occasions their
views were simple as A B C. "Well, if yer lost a chance, somebody else
collared it, an' w'ere were yer?"

The police, variously named "Johns", "cops" and "traps", were their
natural enemies. If one of the Push got into trouble, the others clubbed