Oh for food, rich nourishing food, quiet and fresh air—then all this sickness would go....
Joseph left the docks, and was soon back in the teeming Commercial Road. He walked, lost in thought, unconscious of all his surroundings.
"Nah, then, Monkey Brand, 'oo y'r shovin'? I can see y'r gettin' a thick ear, young feller-my-lad. Owns the bloomin' pyvement—"
A string of obscene oaths and the above words brought Joseph the dreamer down to earth again—the world of the Commercial Road.
He had stumbled against a typical bullet-headed, wicked-eyed East End rough.
The man stepped close up to Joseph, lifting an impudent and dirty face, holding the right arm ready to strike the short, jabbing blow so dear to the hooligan.
Then a strange thing happened.
Joseph, roused so suddenly and rudely from his bitter reverie, became aware of what was toward. He was about to apologize to the man when his words were checked in his mouth by the fellow's filthy profanity. Joseph suddenly, instead of speaking, turned his full face to him. The great, blazing eyes, their brilliancy accentuated a hundred times by hunger and scorn, seemed to cleave their way through the thick skull of the aggressor, to pierce the muddy and besotted brain within, to strike fear into the small leathern heart.
The man lifted his arm and covered his face, just like a street child who expects a blow; and then with a curious sound, half whimper, half snarl, turned and made off in a moment.