"Ma Norton?" asked Hora.
The answer came like a wheeze of a dropsical spider.
"Get out of this. I don't want no ant'em cacklers round my place."
By this time Hora's vision had grown accustomed to the semi-darkness. He took off his hat and laid it on the table. He saw that but for one old woman seated in a corner there was no one else present. "Your eyesight's failing, Ma," he remarked composedly. The old woman struggled to her feet. "Blimy! If it ain't the Master hisself," she wheezed. "What's brought you down here again so soon?"
"What else should but the desire to see you a reformed character, the desire to read the Bible to you, pray with you with the object of ending your days in the workhouse like a decent Christian woman. Ha—ha—ha!" He laughed at his own ribaldry.
"He! He! He!" the old woman cackled in response. Her pallid, pendulous, flabby cheeks flapped as she shook with merriment. Her enormous frame, held loosely together about the waist and shoulders with untidy tapes, threatened to collapse like a half-cooled jelly shaken too soon from the mould. The tears started from her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She gasped and choked until reaching for a bottle standing handily on a shelf she poured something from it into a tumbler standing by and tossed off the draught.
"That's better," she remarked. "You shouldn't make me laugh, Master. Laughing shakes me so that I'm afraid it'll be the death of me some day."
"No fear," answered Hora. "You will finish yourself off with the gin bottle first."
"Lord! What a man it is for making game of an old woman's little weakness," she replied composedly. "But what's brought you here to-day out of your time? Nothin's happened to my gal, has there?"
"Getting anxious to have her home again?" remarked Hora sardonically. "I'm not sure that she would appreciate the home you could give her."