t each other, and then say to the
boy: "Go on."

"Holdin' by the palins, he was, and goin' slow. Then he choked it
off like, and got a chanst for a word, and he says: 'Now, you young
see-saw'--that's what he said, missis, 'see-saw'--'just you stir your
stumps and cut along to the clubbus: and tell that dam red-faced fool
Mulberry to look sharp and send one of the young fellers to lend an
arm, and not to come hisself.' And then he got out a little flat bottle
of something short, and went for a nip; but the cough took him, and it
sprouted over his wropper and was wasted."

The women look at each other again. The nurse sees well into the story,
and says quickly under her breath to Rosalind: "He'd been told what to
do if he felt it coming. A drop of brandy might have made the
difference." The boy goes on as soon as he is waited for.

"Mr. Mulberry he comes runnin' hisself, and a couple more on 'em! And
then they all calls me a young varmint by reason of the guv'nor having
got lost. But a gentleman what comes up, he says all go opposite ways,
he says, and you'll hear him in the fog. So I runs up a parsage, and
in the middle of the parsage I tumbles over the guv'nor lyin' acrost
the parsage. Then I hollers, and then they come."

"Oh dear!" says Rosalind; for this boy had that terrible power of vivid
description which flinches at no realism--_seems_ to enjoy the horror
of it; does not really. Probably it was only his intense anxiety to
communicate _all_, struggling with his sense of his lack of language--a
privilege enjoyed by guv'nors. But Rosalind feels the earnestness of
his brief epic. He winds it up:

"But the guv'nor, he'd done hoarckin'. Nor he never spoke. The
gentleman I told you, he says leave him lyin' a minute, he says, and
he runs. Then back he comes with the apoarthecary--him with the red
light--and they rips the guv'nor's sleeves up, spilin' his coat. And
they prokes into his arm with a packin'-needle. Much use it done! And
then they says, it warn't the fog, and I called 'em a liar. 'Cos it's
a clearin' off, they says. It warn't, not much. I see the perambulance
come, and they shoved him in, and I hooked it off, and heard 'em
saying where's that young shaver, they says; he'll be wanted for his
testament. So I hooked it off."

"And where did you go?"

"To a wisit on a friend, I did. Me and Slimy--him I mentioned afore.
And he says, he says, to come on here--on'y later. So then I come on
here."

Rosalin