thetics and the
knife. Jacks is well disliked by the poor. He has to live, and
therefore he has to cultivate a professional manner and to dance
attendance on wealthy hypochrondriacal patients whom otherwise he would
probably send to the devil. The poor people have told him to his face
that he runs after the rich and cuts about the poor; and they have
nicknamed him _Jacks the Ripper_.

Tony would have to be very far gone before he would willingly go into a
hospital. Just now, between the mackerel and herring seasons, he is fat
and sleepy, very sleek for him. Rheumatic fever in boyhood and
neglected colds have left him rather deaf, and subject to noises in the
head and miscellaneous bodily pains. He is 'a worriter' by nature.
"When I gets bothered," he says, "I often feels as if summut be busted
in me head." As the herring season comes round, so will Tony 'hae the
complaints again,' and few will pity a man who always looks so well. A
few years back, Mrs Widger procured for his deafness some quack
treatment--which did do him good;--but he himself had little faith in
it, and did not persevere. Like the mothers who rejoice in delicate
children rather than feed them properly and send them early to bed,
Tony prefers to think his ailments constitutional, a possession of his,
a curse of fate, which flatters him, so to speak, by singling him out
for its attentions. In a couple of years' time, when he comes out of
the Royal Naval Reserve, he will have the option of accepting L50 down
at once, or of waiting till he is sixty for a pension of four shillings
a week. Mrs Widger understands perfectly that unless he wants to buy
boats and gear--unless, in other words, he can make the L50
productive--he had much better wait for the pension and be sure of a
roof over his head when he is past work. Tony, however, will probably
take the lump sum. He fears he may die and get nothing at all. He does
not _feel_ that he will never see sixty, but he is of opinion that
he will not, and sixty to a man of his temperament is such a long way
hence. He thinks as little as possible of old age. "Aye!" he
says--almost chants, so moved is he,--"the likes o' us slaves an'
slaves all our life, an' us never gets no for'arder. Like as us be when
we'm young, so us'll be at the end o'it all. Come the time when yu'm
past work, an' yu be done an' wearied out, then all yer slavin's gone
for nort. Tis true what I says. I dunno what to think--but 'tis the way
o'it.