Then he chirped.
She looked up, saw him; and the light faded out of her face.
"So Ern's gone to the wars," he said. "You'll be a bit lonely like o nights, the evenings drawing in and all. Say, I might drop in on you when I got the time. I'm not so busy, as I was. Likely I'll be goin back to drive for Mr. Trupp now."
She rose, formidable as a lioness at bay in the mouth of her cave.
"Out of it!" she ordered, and flung an imperious hand towards the door.
Alf fled incontinently.
A navvy, who had been watching him from a door opposite, shouldered heavily across the street to meet him. He was a very big man with a very small head, dressed in corduroys; of the type you still meet in the pages of Punch but seldom in real life. His hands were deep in his pockets, and he said quietly without so much as removing his pipe.
"Stow the bloody truck then!"
Alf paused, astonished. Then he thought the other must have mistaken his man in the dusk.
"Here! d'you know who you're talkin to?" he asked.