"I'm rather independent in me nature," explained the "Boy." "I've stood fur me rights and suffered by it. 'Ad some good jobs in me time. 'Ad some money too. I was a bit lucky over cards. Retired for a year an' done it in. Ain't 'ad no luck since."
"Funny, ain't it," said the woman, still with that strange softness in her shameful eyes. "Funny, ain't it," she repeated: "a boy like you."
"Not so much o' yere 'Boy,'" protested Strephon; "I'm twenty-four."
"Ha!" cried the woman, crouching closer, "what price yere 'umble then? I'm turned forty-four."
Strephon looked lazily at her, munching his ham bone steadily. She made a queer figure, strange to see beside that world-old monument, with her swollen, bloodless face, and button nose, and greedy eyes, and ravelled, rusty hair, the colour of an old dog-fox's pelt. And that which was upon her head, a time-worn sailor-hat, set at a ridiculous angle, increased the queerness of her. "What price yere 'umble?" she cried again, with a shrill little creak of laughter; "turned forty-four, I am."
"Yus," said Strephon simply, "and you look it!"
He continued to munch at his ham bone, and she continued to leer at him, showing neither anger nor surprise. But the flat smile on her face grew gradually flatter, and again she shivered, plucking at the shawl which was not there.
Suddenly the man looked up from his ham bone and spoke to her. "'Ow much did 'e give you for it?" said he.
The woman uttered a sequence of scalding oaths.
"The stingy swine," cried she, "'e give me a tanner; that's what 'e give me—a lousy tanner. See if I don't jolly well pop back there and 'ave a shawl's worf out of 'is stinkin' till—the stingy Jew."