“What for?” Maggie mechanically asked, feeling the while under her apron.
“Paper,” he said.
“At this time of night? You’ll never get one at this time of night!” she said, in her simplicity.
“Come on!”
He stamped his foot with impatience. It was absolutely astonishing, the ignorance in which Maggie lived, and lived efficiently and in content. Edwin filled the house with newspapers, and she never looked at them, never had the idea of looking at them, unless occasionally at the ‘Signal’ for an account of a wedding or a bazaar. In which case she would glance at the world for an instant with mild naïveté, shocked by the horrible things that were apparently going on there, and in five minutes would forget all about it again. Here the whole of England, Ireland, and Scotland was at its front doors that night waiting for newsboys, and to her the night was like any other night! Yet she read many books.
“Here’s a penny,” she said. “Don’t forget to give it me back.”
He ran out bareheaded. At the corner of the street somebody else was expectant. He could distinguish all the words now—
“‘Signal!’ Special edition! Mester Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill. Full report. Gladstone’s speech. Special!”
The dark running figures approached, stopping at frequent gates, and their hoarse voices split the night. The next moment they had gone by, in a flying column, and Edwin and the other man found themselves with fluttering paper in their hands, they knew not how! It was the most unceremonious snatch-and-thrust transaction that could be imagined. Bleakridge was silent again, and its gates closed, and the shouts were descending violently into Bursley.
“Where’s father?” Maggie called out when she heard Edwin in the hall.