Ruth was alone in the flat. As she passed between the pond-room and the kitchen, re-lighting the fire, "sweeping in," and preparing tea, she sang cheerfully to herself "A few more years shall roll, a few more sorrows come." Ruth considered that the sorrows would probably come by means of the youngest Bit. He ought (she said) to have been a little girl. Then, in after years, he might have been a bit of comfort to his mother. Boys, in Ruth's experience, were rarely that.
As she put the cakes for tea into the oven of the stove there came a milk-call from below. Ruth leaned out of the lift-window, and there ensued a conversation with the white-jacketed milk-boy.
"Saw your guv'nor last night," the boy grinned.
"Where's that cream I ordered, and that quart of nursery milk? You can't mind your business for thinking of picture palaces."
"Keep your 'air on; coming up now.—I say, they put 'is 'ead under a steam-'ammer. I said it was a dummy, but Gwen said it wasn't. Was it 'im?"
"You mind your own interference, young man, and leave others to mind theirs; you ought to have something better to do with your threepences than collecting cigarette cards and taking girls to the pictures."
"It was in 'Bullseye Bill: A Drarmer of Love an' 'Ate'—'Scoundrel, 'ow dare you speak those words to a pure wife an' mother on the very threshold of the 'Ouse of——'"
"That's enough, young man—we don't want language Taken in Vain here—and you can tell 'em at your place we're leaving soon."
"But was that 'im in the long whiskers at the end, when the powder magazine blew up?"
But Ruth, taking her cans, shut down the window and returned to the kitchen.