returned the broadside with
promptitude.

"Door, indeed! you poor whey-faced drab, you dare to say the word door
to _me_, a respectable woman, as Mister Tripes here knows me well, and
have a score against me behind that there wery door as you disgraces,
and as it's _you_ as ought to be t'other side, you ought; for it's out
of the streets as _you_ come, well I knows, an' say another word, and
I'll take that there bonnet off of your head, and chuck it into them
streets and _you_ arter it. O dear! O dear! that ever I should be
spoke to like this here, and my master out o' work a month come
Toosday, and this here gentleman standing by! But I'll set my mark on
ye, if I get six months for it--I will!"

Thus speaking, or rather screaming, and brandishing her baby, as the
gonfalonier waves his gonfalon, the slat-slatternly woman, swelling
into a fury for the nonce, made a dive at Dorothea, which, but for the
interposition of "this here gentleman," as she called the coalheaver,
might have produced considerable mischief. That good man, however,
took a deal of "weathering," as sailors say, and ere either of the
combatants could get round his bulky person, the presence of a
policeman at the door warned them that ordeal by battle had better
be deferred till a more fitting opportunity. They burst into tears,
therefore, simultaneously, and the dispute ended, as such disputes
often do, in a general reconciliation, cemented by the consumption of
much excisable fluid, some of it at the expense of the philanthropic
coalheaver, whose simple faith involved a persuasion that the closest
connection must always be preserved between good-fellowship and beer.

After these potations, it is not surprising that the slatternly woman
should have found herself, baby and all, under the care of the civil
power at a police-station, or that Gentleman Jim and his ladye-love
should have adjourned to sober themselves in the steaming gallery of a
playhouse.

Behold them, then, wedged into a front seat, Dorothea's bonnet hanging
over the rail, Jim's gaudy handkerchief bulging with oranges, both
spectators too absorbed in the action of the piece to realise its
improbabilities, and the woman thoroughly identifying herself with the
character and fortunes of its heroine.

The theatre is small, but the audience if not select are enthusiastic;
the stage is narrow, but affords room for a deal of strutting and
striding about on the part of an overpowering actor