is
poor thing set it down untasted, and forthwith began to cry, the
cracksman's anger knew no bounds.

"Drop it!" he exclaimed brutally. "You'd best, I tell ye! D'ye think I
want my blessed drink watered with your blessed nonsense? What's come
to ye, ye contrairy devil? I thought I'd larned ye better. I'll see if
I can't larn ye still. Would ye now!"

It was almost a blow,--such a push as is the next thing to actual
violence, and it sent her staggering from the sloppy bar at which
their altercation took place against a bench by the wall, where she
sat down pale and gasping, to the indignation of a slatternly woman
nursing her child, and the concern of an honest coalheaver, who had a
virago of a wife at home.

"Easy, mate!" expostulated that worthy, putting his broad frame
between the happy pair. "Hold on a bit, an' give her a drop when she
comes to. She'd 'a throwed her arms about your neck a while ago, an'
now she'd as soon knife ye as look at ye."

Wild-eyed and pale, Dorothea glared round, as Clytemnestra may have
glared when her hand rested on the fatal axe; but this Holborn
Agamemnon did not seem destined to fall by a woman's blow, inasmuch as
the tide was effectually turned by another woman's interference.

The slatternly lady, shouldering her child, as a soldier does his
firelock, thrust herself eagerly forward.

"Knife him!" she exclaimed, with a most unfeminine execration. "I'd
knife him, precious soon, if it was me, the blessed willen! To take
an' use a woman like that there--a nasty, cowardly, sneakin,' ugly,
tallow-faced beast!"

Had it not been for the imputation on his beauty, Dorothea might
perhaps have blazed out in open rebellion, or remained passive
in silent sulks; but to hear _her_ Jim, the flash man of a dozen
gin-shops, the beloved of a score of rivals, called "ugly," was
more than flesh and blood could endure. She turned fiercely on her
auxiliary and gave battle at once.

"And who arst _you_ to interfere, mem, if I may wenture to make the
inquiry?" said she, with that polite but spasmodic intonation that
denotes the approaching row. "Keep yerself _to_ yerself, if you
please, mem. And I'll thank ye not to go for to come between me and my
young man, not till you've got a young man of your own, mem; and if
you'd like to walk out, there's the door, mem, and don't you try for
to give _me_ none o' your sauce, for I'm not a-goin' to put up with
it."

The slatternly woman ran her guns out and