And as we sat and talked of the children, and our own happiness, and the seeds we were going to sow in the garden, the five windows grew lighter as the shadows deepened.
But the spirit of the room was silent.
[SEGREGATION]
"I've got the plague, sir, upon my sam, I 'ave. I'll show yer the spot, sir, same as they 'ad in 1666 w'en the Tower o' London was burnt down, an' Sir Christopher Wren built St. Paul's--so 'elp me Gawd."
The speaker was a plausible loafer of the usual type. He was dressed in white, or what had once been white raiment. A gilt button or two hung round the coat; mute testimony to its having once belonged to a man who did some work of some kind for the Government. He was not a Eurasian, that you could see by the line of white on his forehead above the tan, as he stood apologetically in the court room holding his helmet before him with both hands as if he meant to offer it up as a bribe. It was certainly the most valuable thing about him, for it had a wadded quilted cover and looked, what the rest of him did not--respectable.
"The plague!" echoed the magistrate (I am the magistrate). "Nonsense, man! you're drunk--that's what's the matter with you. Inspector, remove that man: put him into the lock-up if he gives trouble."
The inspector approached, but the loafer stood his ground, not without quiet dignity; the dignity that comes to some people in the first stage of intoxication. "Excuse of me, sir," he said, "but I ain't going to make myself a noosance to nobody. That's w'y I came 'ere. That's w'y I spent my last bloomin' hart hanner (eight annas) in takin' a ticca ghari (hired carriage) to the 'orspitals, every one of 'em, so as there might be no infections. Bless your 'art, I don't want to do no 'arm to anyone. I wants to be seggergated, that's all, afore I does any."
The magistrate smiled faintly: there was something likeable in the man's face.
"So you've been to the hospitals, have you? What did the doctors say!"
"Same as you, sir," he replied cheerfully, "as I was drunk; but if I am, Job Charnock--that's me, sir--never got real on afore with one glass o' harrack--an' beastly bad stuff it was, too--smelt like a dead dorg an' tasted like a tannery."