crowd increased every moment; she was pushed further and further back,
and in the hubbub could only catch portions of what the two furious women
were saying.

"No, you won't fight, you ----; that's not your way, but wait till one's
down, and then.... And if you got six weeks with hard, it's a pity, I
say, as it wasn't six months.... But if I was a ---- blab like you I
could say worse things of you than you and your ---- Moon Street crew can
say of me any day.... And you'll out with it if you don't want your head
knocked on the stones for nothing.... Not by you, you ----; I'm ready, if
you want to try your strength with me, then we'll see whose head 'ull be
knocked on the stones.... Yes, I'll fight you fast enough, but first....
If you'll have it, where's the girl you send into the streets to beg? You
and your man to git drunk on the coppers she gits! More too if you'd like
to hear it.... But you can't say more, nor that neither, you ----....
Smash my teeth, then! Who was her father, or did the poor fool marry you
off the streets when he was drunk?"

With a scream and a curse her antagonist sprang at her, and in a moment
they were striking and tearing at each other like a couple of enraged
wild animals. With a burst of cheering the people pressed closer round,
but after a few moments they interposed and forcibly pulled the
combatants apart. Not that there was any ruth in their hearts, any
compassionate desire to shield these two miserable women of their own
class from their insane fury; their only fear was that the fighters would
exhaust themselves too soon, encumbered as they were with their jackets
and shawls. Not one in the throng remembered that he had an old mother, a
pale-faced wife and little children at home, and sisters, working-girls
perhaps. For the working-man has a sporting instinct as well as his
betters; he cannot gratify it by seeing stripped athletic men pounding