‘That girl’s a——little blood-sucker!’ said the old man. ‘Wherever I go, there’s that girl comes and collects the coppers kind people mean for me. Leave me alone, all of you! Clear out! I’ve broke my whistle now, and haven’t a copper to get another, let alone a crust of bread these three days.’
‘What a shime!’ commented the crowd. ‘Call ’erself a gal! I’d gal ’er! A reg’lar little Bulgarian, that’s what she is!’
‘Now, then, move on there,’ commanded a big policeman, bearing down on the crowd, confident in his own broad momentum, like a punt among the reeds. ‘What’s all this?’
‘They’ve been robbin’ a pore blind man, that’s what it is,’ said the benevolent dentist; at which the policeman rounded on him sharply with extended, directing arm.
‘Now then, you move on there!’ And the dentist retired submissively in the direction indicated, hovering in safety.
A benevolent, bent old gentleman, lately helped by the porter down the steps of one of the big bow-windowed clubs, came hobbling up on three legs, and stopped and asked questions. The policeman saluted. The little crowd closed round them; the black helmet in the midst leaned this way and that, arbitrating between misfortune and benevolence. Judgment and award were soon achieved; the black helmet heaved and turned about, and the crowd scattered obediently east and west.
‘What a nice old gentleman!’ said one of many voices passing Prosser.
‘Give ’im a sovring, did he?’
‘Don’t you wish you was blind, Miss ’Ankin?’
‘Lot of sov’rings you’d give me!’