ow--

_Vincent, a workman, comes in._

VINCENT. Good-morning, Mademoiselle Therese. I want a word with you,
because it's you who engages--

THERESE. Not the workmen.

VINCENT. I know. But it's about a woman, about my wife.

THERESE [_sharply_] Your wife? But I don't want your wife.

VINCENT. I heard as how you were taking on hands.

THERESE. Yes, but I choose them carefully. First of all I take the ones
who need work or are not wanted at home.

VINCENT. You're quite right--but I ain't asking you to pay my old woman
very much--not as much as a man.

THERESE. Why not, if she does the same work?

VINCENT [_with male superiority_] Well, in the first place, she's only a
woman; and, besides, if you didn't make a bit out of it, you wouldn't
take her in the place of a man.

THERESE. But you get excellent wages here yourself. You can live without
forcing your wife to work.

VINCENT. Well, anyhow, her few halfpence would be enough to pay for my
tobacco.

LUCIENNE [_laughing_] Come, you don't smoke as much as all that.

VINCENT. Besides, it'll put a bit more butter on the bread.

THERESE. But your wife will take the place of another woman who hasn't
even dry bread perhaps.

VINCENT. Oh, if one was bothering all the time about other people's
troubles, you'd have enough to do!

THERESE. Now will you forgive me if I meddle a little in what isn't
exactly my business?

VINCENT. Oh, go on, you won't upset me.

THERESE. What d'you do when you leave the works? You go to the saloon?

VINCENT [_losing control of himself and becoming violent and coarse_]
That's yer game, is it! You take me for a regler soaker. That's a bit
too thick, that is. You can go and ask for yourself in all the saloons
round here. Blimey, sometimes I don't drink nothing but water for
a week on end! Can you find anybody as has ever seen me
blue-blind-paralytic--eh? I'm one of the steady ones, I am. I has a
tiddley in the morning, like every man as is a man, to keep out the
fog; then I has a Vermouth before lunch, and a drop of something short
after, just to oil the works like--and that's the bloomin' lot. Of
course you're bound to have a Pernod before dinner to get your appetite
up; and if I go for a smoke and a wet after supper, well, it's for the
sake of a bit of company.

THERESE [_who has been jotting down figures with a pencil while he has
been talking_] Well, that's a franc a day you might have saved.

VINCENT. A franc.

THERES