ree.
The house is in the south west corner of the garden, and the geranium
bush in the north east corner.

At the garden-door of the house there appears presently a man who is
clearly no barbarian, being in fact a less agreeable product peculiar
to modern commercial civilization. His frame and flesh are those of an
ill-nourished lad of seventeen; but his age is inscrutable: only the
absence of any sign of grey in his mud colored hair suggests that he is
at all events probably under forty, without prejudice to the possibility
of his being under twenty. A Londoner would recognize him at once as an
extreme but hardy specimen of the abortion produced by nature in a city
slum. His utterance, affectedly pumped and hearty, and naturally vulgar
and nasal, is ready and fluent: nature, a Board School education, and
some kerbstone practice having made him a bit of an orator. His dialect,
apart from its base nasal delivery, is not unlike that of smart London
society in its tendency to replace diphthongs by vowels (sometimes
rather prettily) and to shuffle all the traditional vowel
pronunciations. He pronounces ow as ah, and i as aw, using the ordinary
ow for o, i for a, a for u, and e for a, with this reservation, that
when any vowel is followed by an r he signifies its presence, not by
pronouncing the r, which he never does under these circumstances, but by
prolonging and modifyinq the vowel, sometimes even to the extreme degree
of pronouncing it properly. As to his yol for l (a compendious delivery
of the provincial eh-al), and other metropolitan refinements, amazing to
all but cockneys, they cannot be indicated, save in the above imperfect
manner, without the aid of a phonetic alphabet. He is dressed in
somebody else's very second best as a coast-guardsman, and gives himself
the airs of a stage tar with sufficient success to pass as a possible
fish porter of bad character in casual employment during busy times
at Billingsgate. His manner shows an earnest disposition to ingratiate
himself with the missionary, probably for some dishonest purpose.

THE MAN. Awtenoon, Mr. Renkin. (The missionary sits up quickly, and
turns, resigning himself dutifully to the interruption.) Yr honor's
eolth.

RANKIN (reservedly). Good afternoon, Mr. Drinkwotter.

DRINKWATER. You're not best pleased to be hinterrupted in yr bit o
gawdnin bow the lawk o me, gavner.

RANKIN. A missionary knows nothing of leks of that soart, or of disleks
either, Mr