‘Gow on!’
‘What did they take ’im up for then?’
‘On’y takin’ ’im over the road, stoopid.’
Prosser stood and watched the old man cross in the constable’s grip; saw him loosed into Grosvenor Place; followed, and watched him as he clumped his way along the blank brick wall, leaning forward from the crutch, grotesquely and terribly, towards his extended arm, which beat the pavement with a stick before him, driving pedestrians to right and left, crying furiously as he went ‘Pity the poor blind!’ and stopping now and then to mumble the sovereign and chuckle to himself.
Near Victoria Station he stopped, and thrashed the kerb. A girl slipped out from somewhere and took his arm; the same girl who had so lately robbed him.
‘That you, Joey?’ said the blind man.
‘What luck, Toppin?’
The old man grinned.
‘Got a plunk, Joey; benevolent gent.’
‘My, what a soft!’