"Now then, Charley, when you've done a-drinkin' in this bloomin' beauty-show, you can give me a 'and."
"'Oo are you calling a beauty-show?" demanded the woman in the dolman. "You ain't got much to talk about, with a stummick like yours."
"My mistake, missis," said the big man imperturbably. "Sorry I made you cry." Then, turning to Charley, he added: "If you 'adn't such a thick 'ead, Charley, you'd know it was a sugar queue. They're wearin' too much for a beauty-show. Now, then, over the top, my lad." He indicated the railings with a nod, the gateway was blocked.
With the leisurely movements of a fatalist, Charley moved his inconspicuous person towards the railings of No. 7, while the big man proceeded to untie the rope that bound a miscellaneous collection of household goods to the hand-cart, an operation which entirely absorbed the attention of the queue.
"You took it?" interrogated the rag-and-bone man.
"Don't you worry, cocky," said the big man as he lifted from the barrow a cane-bottomed chair, through which somebody had evidently sat, and placed it on the pavement. "Once inside the garding and the 'ouse is mine. 'Ere, get on wiv it, Charley," he admonished the lad, who was standing by the kerb as if reluctant to trespass.
With unexpressive face, the boy turned and climbed the railings.
"Catch 'old," cried the man, thrusting into Charley's unwilling hands a dilapidated saucepan.
The boy tossed it on to the small flower-bed in the centre of the garden, where Mrs. Bindle was endeavouring to cultivate geraniums from slips supplied by a fellow-worshipper at the Alton Road Chapel. These geranium slips were the stars in the grey firmament of her life. She tended them assiduously, and always kept a jug of water just inside the parlour-window with which to discourage investigating cats. It was she too that had planted the lobelia-border.
The queue seemed hypnotised by the overwhelming personality of the big man. With the fatalism of despair they decided that the gods were against them, and that he really had achieved the success he claimed. They still lingered, as if instinct told them that dramatic moments were pending.