about? What's the matter with you,
anyway? Hey?'

"And the inside dog says:

"'Who do you think you're talking to? You---! I'll----' etc., etc., etc.

"Then the outside dog says:

"'Why, you're worse than a flaming old slut!'

"Then they go at it, and you can hear them miles off, like a Chinese
war--like a hundred great guns firing eighty blank cartridges a minute,
till the outside dog is just as wild to get inside and eat the inside
dog as the inside dog is to get out and disembowel him. Yet if those
same two dogs were to meet casually outside they might get chummy at
once, and be the best of friends, and swear everlasting mateship, and
take each other home."

JONES'S ALLEY

She lived in Jones's Alley. She cleaned offices, washed, and nursed
from daylight until any time after dark, and filled in her spare time
cleaning her own place (which she always found dirty--in a "beastly
filthy state," she called it--on account of the children being left in
possession all day), cooking, and nursing her own sick--for her family,
though small, was so in the two senses of the word, and sickly; one or
another of the children was always sick, but not through her fault.
She did her own, or rather the family washing, at home too, when she
couldn't do it by kind permission, or surreptitiously in connection with
that of her employers. She was a haggard woman. Her second husband was
supposed to be dead, and she, lived in dread of his daily resurrection.
Her eldest son was at large, but, not being yet sufficiently hardened in
misery, she dreaded his getting into trouble even more than his frequent
and interested appearances at home. She could buy off the son for a
shilling or two and a clean shirt and collar, but she couldn't purchase
the absence of the father at any price--_he_ claimed what he called his
"conzugal rights" as well as his board, lodging, washing and beer. She
slaved for her children, and nag-nag-nagged them everlastingly, whether
they were in the right or in the wrong, but they were hardened to it and
took small notice. She had the spirit of a bullock. Her whole nature
was soured. She had those "worse troubles" which she couldn't tell to
anybody, but bad to suffer in silence.

She also, in what she called her "spare time," put new cuffs and
collar-bands on gentlemen's shirts. The gentlemen didn't live in Jones's
Alley--they boarded with a patroness of the haggard woman; they didn't
know their shirts were