"NOW we've got a ticklish job, missus, and I wish Collins had gone straight home this afternoon with his money, instead of going off up the town as he seems to have done, for he is an ugly customer, I have heard, when he has had a drop too much."
"Well, I should try and find out before I spoke whether he had been drinking, and if he had—well, it would be better to walk on and take no notice of him," prudently advised Mrs. Brown.
Her husband shook his head. "The thing is, what ought I to do? Jack says it is getting a common thing with him now, and we all know the manager won't stand a man drinking at our works; and so, as I know this, if I can say a word to make him pull up short, it is my duty to do it at all costs."
Mrs. Brown almost wished her husband had stayed at home, for she knew the quiet determination of his character where he thought anything was a matter of duty. When they reached the outskirts of the market, she gave him her basket to hold while she went into a shop, and almost at the same moment Collins came reeling along the road, and seeing Brown with the large market-basket in his hand, made some jeering remark about him being a "tame cat." Mrs. Brown was in the crowded shop, and neither saw nor heard Collins, and Brown only heard part of what was said, but he laid his hand on the shoulder of the half-drunken man, and whispered—
"Look here, Collins, old man. I want—"
But Collins did not give him time to say more. With an oath he struck out at him, exclaiming, "You'll get more than you want this time;" and with a second blow in the face knocked him down in the roadway, and would have kicked him in his fury if one of the men near had not dragged him back.
A crowd quickly gathered round, and when Mrs. Brown came out of the shop, she found her husband lying insensible in the centre of this crowd, and she guessed at once that Collins had been the aggressor. She pushed her way through to his side, and one of the men ran for a doctor; but by the time he arrived Brown had so far recovered that he could sit up on a chair that had been fetched for him from a neighbouring shop, and look round in a dazed fashion.
"Take him home as quickly as you can," said the doctor.
Brown had not spoken, and Collins was not to be seen, and Mrs. Brown would not ask a question as to how it happened while the crowd were within hearing; but as they walked slowly back, Mrs. Brown said—
"How did it begin?"