"It's ahl I have," she sorrowfully said, offering it to him.

He shook his head, and she was about to retire when someone came forward
and placed a halfpenny in her hand. He took his fee, and then all pressed
closer round to watch with intense interest while a drop of brown liquid
was poured on to the poor woman's tongue, thrust far out so that none of
that balsam of life should be lost. After witnessing this scene, Fan
hurried on once more.

At length, near Blandford Square, she came against a crowd so large that
nothing short of a fight, or the immediate prospect of one, could have
caused it to collect at that late hour. A temporary opening of the crowd
enabled her to see into the middle of it, and there, in a small space
which had been made for them, two women stood defiantly facing each
other. The dim light from the windows of the public-house they had been
drinking in fell on their heads, and she instantly recognised them both:
one was her mother, excited by alcohol and anger; the other a tall, pale-
faced, but brawny-looking woman, known in the place as "Long 'Liza," a
noted brawler, once a neighbour of the Harrods in Moon Street, but now
just out of prison and burning to pay off old scores. In vain Fan
struggled to reach her mother; the ring of people closed up again; she
was flung roughly back and no regard paid to her piteous appeals and
sobs.

It was anguish to her to have to stand there powerless on the outer edge
of the ring of people, to listen to the frantic words of the insult and
challenge of the two women and the cries and cheers of the excited crowd.
But it was plain that a war of words was not enough to satisfy the
onlookers, that they were bent on making the women come to blows. The