-named _smut_.
It was furtive, a distortion of life's facts and inimical therefore to
life. Impropriety here, on the other hand, is a recognition of life's
facts, an expression of life, a playful ebullition.

Tony, when he came in, enquired of Mam 'Idger what she had done with
the picture. "Did Rosie die in the summer?" I asked, remembering how
the children will run out to the milkman with a dirty can unless a
sharp eye is kept upon them, and how also the larder is fixed up over
the main drain.

"Her died late in the autumn with convulsions from teething," Mrs
Widger replied. "An' her didn't ought to ha' died then but for Dr
Brown. When her was took ill, proper bad, I sent one of the maidens for
Dr Bayliss, but he was out to the country for they didn' know how long.
So off I sends the maid to Dr Brown, an' he sends back a message as he
cuden' attend Dr Bayliss's patients wi'out Dr Bayliss asked him.
Certainly 'twas late; but my blood jest boiled, an' I took Rosie into
Grannie's an' goes up myself. Rosie didn' belong to no doctor. Her'd
never had one. Howsbe-ever, Dr Brown says to me the same as he'd told
the maid, that he cuden' come. An' then he says, 'My good woman, I
_won't_ come!' Jest like that! My flare was up; I wer jest about to let
fly my mind at 'en--an' I remembered Rosie lying in convulsions to
Grannie's, an' flew out o' his house like a mad thing. Rosie wer all
but dead. Her was gone when Dr Bayliss come'd next morning."

"Aye!" added Tony. "That wer it. Some doctors be kind, an' some don't
trouble nort about the likes o' us when they got visitors to run a'ter.
I don' say they treats the likes o' us worse'n other people; I don'
know: oftentimes they'm so kind as can be; but when they don't behave
like they ought to, other people has the means to make 'em sorry for
it, an' us an't. They knows that. Us can't do nort an' that's the way
o'it. Rosie didn' never ought to ha' died."

"No-o-o!" said Mrs Widger.

One can see the tigress in most women, in every mother, if one waits
long enough. I saw it in Mrs Widger then. If she ever has the whip-hand
of Dr Brown....

12

This mackerel hooking, which is a two-man job though Tony could and
would do it by himself were I not here, has most fortunately raised me
out of the position of a mere lodger, a household excrescence,
tolerated only for the sake of certain shillings a week. It has
provided me with a niche of my own, which I occupy--at sea the mate on
a