"Damn it! you are coming out strong, Tilda!" ejaculated Josh Pedler. "Blue ruin—padding-ken—why, I never heard you patter flash before."
"Oh! you don't know what you may see me do yet," said the young woman, in a voice indicative of unnatural excitement. "And what does it matter? Perhaps you'll hear me cursing and swearing to-morrow! Any thing—any thing," she added, her voice changing to a tone of deep, intense feeling,—"any thing, so long as one can only grow hardened!"
And having tossed off a third glass of liquor, she accepted and ate the portion of food that Josh Pedler handed to her—although but a few minutes before she recoiled from it, as if it were her own flesh and blood!
"Now you are acting like a sensible woman," said Josh; "and you make me feel more comfortable. But when you first come in, I couldn't make out what the devil possessed you: you looked all queer like—just as if you was going to commit suicide."
"Suicide!—ha! ha!" laughed Matilda strangely. "Well—I did think of it as I was coming home; but I remembered that you was here—hungry—starving—and too ill to get up and shift for yourself. So I came back, Josh. But won't you have some gin? You don't know what good it does one. If I had only taken some before I went out just now—that is, if I had had the money to buy it—I shouldn't have gone whimpering along the street as I did. No wonder all the poor girls who walk the pavement drink so much gin. I am already quite another person. I do declare that I could sing. But here comes some one up the stairs: it can't be for us."
"Yes, it is though," said Josh Pedler, as the heavy steps of a man halted at the door, to which a fist was applied by no means lightly. "Come in!"
The visitor obeyed this invitation without farther ceremony; and the moment Josh caught sight of his countenance, he cried joyfully, "Tim the Snammer!"
CHAPTER LXX.
TIM THE SNAMMER.
The individual who rejoiced in the name of Tim the Snammer, was a tall, athletic, well-built man of about thirty-two, and tolerably good-looking. His attire consisted of a shabby bottle-green surtout, a dark waistcoat, and drab trousers; and he wore his hat very far down on his head—probably because it was too large for him, his hair being particularly short, all his superfluous curls having fallen beneath the unsparing scissors of a gaol-barber.
"Holloa! Josh, my boy!" cried Tim, as he closed the door behind him. "Why, you are taking it cozie there in bed."