"Ain't I in luck?" she said, handing her mug back when it was empty. "Gi' me another, Barney."
Antony Dart drank coffee also and ate bread and dripping. The coffee was hot and the bread and dripping, dashed with salt, quite eatable. He had needed food and felt the better for it.
"Come on, mister," said Glad, when their meal was ended. "I want to get back to Polly, an' there's coal and bread and things to buy."
She hurried him along, breaking her pace with hops at intervals. She darted into dirty shops and brought out things screwed up in paper. She went last into a cellar and returned carrying a small sack of coal over her shoulders.
"Bought sack an' all," she said elatedly. "A sack's a good thing to 'ave."
"Let me carry it for you," said Antony Dart.
"Spile yer coat," with her sidelong upward glance.
"I don't care," he answered. "I don't care a damn."
The final expletive was totally unnecessary, but it meant a thing he did not say. Whatsoever was thrusting him this way and that, speaking through his speech, leading him to do things he had not dreamed of doing, should have its will with him. He had been fastened to the skirts of this beggar imp and he would go on to the end and do what was to be done this day. It was part of the dream.
The sack of coal was over his shoulder when they turned into Apple Blossom Court. It would have been a black hole on a sunny day, and now it was like Hades, lit grimly by a gas-jet or two, small and flickering, with the orange haze about them. Filthy flagging, murky doorways, broken steps and broken windows stuffed with rags, and the smell of the sewers let loose had Apple Blossom Court.