“You’d better be going,” he said; and he gently jogged the recumbent boatman’s elbow.
“Leave me be! I want my tea,” was the muttered and lyrical reply.
“Hook it!” said Price.
“Without my tea?” asked Blake, opening his eyes wide.
“It was yesterday,” explained Price, brusquely. “There isn’t any free tea tonight.”
The effect was magical. A very sinister expression came over the face of the prostrate one, and he slowly clambered to his feet.
“Ho!” he said, disengaging himself from his coat. “Ho. There ain’t no free tea ternight, ain’t there? Bills stuck on them railings in errer, I suppose. Another bloomin’ errer. Seems to me I’m sick of errers. Wot I says is, ‘Come on, all of yer.’ I’m Tom Blake, I am. You can arst them down at Brentford. Kind old Tom Blake, wot wouldn’t hurt a fly; and I says, ‘Come on, all of yer,’ and I’ll knock yer insides through yer backbones.”
Sidney Price spoke again. His words were honeyed, but ineffectual.
“I’m honest old Tom, I am,” boomed Thomas Blake, “and I’m ready for the lot of yer: you and yer free tea and yer errers.”
At this point Alf Joblin detached himself from the hovering crowd and said to Price: “He must be cowed. I’ll knock sense into the drunken brute.”