“Do tell me!” Cosimo implored....
Mrs. ’Ill was the woman who came in twice a week to do up the studio; Jellies (so called because she worked at the Jelly Factory across the river) was her daughter. Cosimo spoke again, in tragic tones.
“At least tell me whether he’s ‘in’ or ‘out’!” he begged.
“Bielby’s out of this; tell Bielby, Amory,” several voices said at once; and Amory’s pretty golden eyes sought Mr. Bielby. She explained.
Jellie’s fiancé (she said) was ‘in’—in prison. It had been (said Amory), oh, so killing! He had snatched a jacket from outside a second-hand clothes’ shop, and had run away with it and had put it on: but he had not had time to remove the wooden hanger—Mr. Bielby knew those wooden hangers they hang coats on?—well, he’d not had time to remove the hanger before a policeman had collared him, and there he had been, swearing the coat was his, with the wire hook sticking up at the back of his neck! Fancy—just fancy!—the psychological situation! Really, somebody ought to write to William James about it!—’Orris (’Orris Jackman his name was—after orris-root, Amory supposed) vowing that he’d bought the coat weeks ago, and then the policeman putting his finger through the hook and hauling him away!...
“And Mrs. ’Ill——” Amory rippled on to Mr. Bielby——
“Oh yes—tell him about Mrs. ’Ill and the Creek!” they cried.
“Mrs. ’Ill, you see, Mr. Bielby, keeps what she calls a Creek—that’s a crèche! (We must all go and see it one of these days!) It’s in the World’s End Passage, next door to a fried fish shop, and there are twenty babies, and the woman at the fried fish shop keeps an eye on them when Mrs. ’Ill comes in here on Wednesdays and Saturdays, that is, unless Jellies happens to be out of work——”
“But the hens are the best, Amory—tell him about the hens——” they prompted.
With that Amory was fairly launched. Mrs. ’Ill (she said) not only took charge of other people’s babies; she kept hens also, in a sort of back scullery, and at tea-time they sat in her lap and ate winkles off her plate, and she said she felt towards them just as if they were her own! Hens and babies—Figurez vous!—And there was always a christening party or something at the Creek, to which the hens went too, and—(they must listen to this!)—at one party they’d had, last Christmas, nobody’d been to bed for two nights, and Mrs. ’Ill had explained that they’d had to cut it short because of ’Ill having been dead only a week!——