“‘For two years,’ I said, ‘you’ve let a girl keep you,’ I said, ‘and then you can go and give one of my rings to that Florrie. Let me get hold of her,’ I said. ‘I’ll tear her eyes out.’ ‘No, you won’t, now then,’ he said. ‘Won’t I? I will, then,’ and with that I just lost control of my feelings, I felt that wild....”
“What did you do, Doll?” asked Daisy, plying her with brandy to soothe the outraged memory.
“What did I do? Why, I spat in his tea and came straight off down to the Orange. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you can sit drinking tea while you break my heart.’ Don’t you ever go and have a fancy boy, Daise. Why, I was a straight girl when I first knew him. Straight—well, anyway not on the game like what I am now.” Here Dolly Wearne began to weep with bitter self-compassion. “I’ve slaved for that fellow, and now he serves me like dirt.”
“Go on. Don’t cry, duck,” Daisy begged. “Come home with me to-night and we can send and fetch your things away to-morrow. I wouldn’t cry over him,” she said fiercely. “There’s no fellow worth crying over. The best of them isn’t worth crying over.”
The four offensive youths in the alcove began to mock Dolly’s tears, and Michael, who was already bitten with some of the primitive pugnacity of the underworld, rose to attack them.
“Sit down,” Daisy commanded. “I wouldn’t mess my hands, if I was you, with such a pack of filth. Sit down, you stupid boy. You’ll get us all into trouble.”
Michael managed by a great effort to resume his seat, but for a minute or two he saw the beerhall through a mist of rage.
Gradually Dolly’s tears ceased to flow, and after another brandy she became merely more abusive of the faithless Dave. Her cheeks swollen with crying seemed flabbier than ever, and her long retreating chin expressed a lugubrious misanthropy.
“Rotten, I call it, don’t you?” said the sympathetic Daisy, appealing to Michael.
He agreed with a profound nod.