orders, contesting the ground inch by inch as they fought for the value
of a penny. And they emerged staggering under the weight of their
plunder, laden like ants with food for hungry mouths--the insatiable maw
of the people.

The push was gathered under the veranda at the corner of Cardigan Street,
smoking cigarettes and discussing the weightier matters of life--horses
and women. They were all young--from eighteen to twenty-five--for the
larrikin never grows old. They leaned against the veranda posts, or
squatted below the windows of the shop, which had been to let for months.

Here they met nightly, as men meet at their club--a terror to the
neighbourhood. Their chief diversion was to guy the pedestrians, leaping
from insult to swift retaliation if one resented their foul comments.

"Garn!" one was saying, "I tell yer some 'orses know more'n a man. I
remember old Joe Riley goin' inter the stable one day to a brown mare as
'ad a derry on 'im 'cause 'e flogged 'er crool. Well, wot does she do?
She squeezes 'im up agin the side o' the stable, an' nearly stiffens 'im
afore 'e cud git out. My oath, she did!"

"That's nuthin' ter wot a mare as was runnin' leader in Daly's 'bus used
ter do," began another, stirred by that rivalry which makes talkers
magnify and invent to cap a story; but he stopped suddenly as two girls
approached.

One was short and fat, a nugget, with square, sullen features; the other,
thin as a rake, with a mass of red hair that fell to her waist in
a thick coil.