“Do you eat opium?”
“Smokes it,” she replies with difficulty, still racked by her cough. “Give me three-and-sixpence, and I’ll lay it out well, and get back. If you don’t give me three-and-sixpence, don’t give me a brass farden. And if you do give me three-and-sixpence, deary, I’ll tell you something.”
He counts the money from his pocket, and puts it in her hand. She instantly clutches it tight, and rises to her feet with a croaking laugh of satisfaction.
“Bless ye! Hark’ee, dear genl’mn. What’s your Chris’en name?”
“Edwin.”
“Edwin, Edwin, Edwin,” she repeats, trailing off into a drowsy repetition of the word; and then asks suddenly: “Is the short of that name Eddy?”
“It is sometimes called so,” he replies, with the colour starting to his face.
“Don’t sweethearts call it so?” she asks, pondering.
“How should I know?”
“Haven’t you a sweetheart, upon your soul?”