“I don’t know what boys are coming to!” cried the tramp. “These board schools it is. Gets ’old of everything ’e can and bunks! Gaw! if I get my ’ands on ’im, I’ll show ’im. I’ll—”
For some time the tramp revelled in the details, for the most part crudely surgical, of his vengeance upon Bealby....
“Then there’s that dog bite. ’Ow do I know ’ow that’s going to turn ät? If I get ’idrophobia, blowed if I don’t bite some of ’em. ’Idrophobia. Screaming and foaming. Nice death for a man—my time o’ life! Bark I shall. Bark and bite.
“And this is your world,” said the tramp. “This is the world you put people into and expect ’em to be ’appy....
“I’d like to bite that dough-faced fool with the silly ’at. I’d enjoy biting ’im. I’d spit it out but I’d bite it right enough. Wiping abät with ’is ’O. Gaw! Get off my ground! Be orf with you. Slash. ’E ought to be shut up.
“Where’s the justice of it?” shouted the tramp. “Where’s the right and the sense of it? What ’ave I done that I should always get the under side? Why should I be stuck on the under side of everything? There’s worse men than me in all sorts of positions.... Judges there are. ’Orrible Kerecters. Ministers and people. I’ve read abät ’em in the papers....
“It’s we tramps are the scapegoats. Somebody’s got to suffer so as the police can show a face. Gaw! Some of these days I’ll do something. I’ll do something. You’ll drive me too far with it, I tell you—”
He stopped suddenly and listened. Bealby had creaked.
“Gaw! What can one do?” said the tramp after a long interval.
And then complaining more gently, the tramp began to feel about to make his simple preparations for the night.