“Everyone isn’t young like you,” said Mary, sitting down on a bench near the stove. The girl laughed vacantly, tried to make a ring of the cigarette smoke, was unable to do so, and walked away. Mary Martin turned to Maudie and whispered something to her.
“Ah, puir lass!” exclaimed Maudie.
“And the one to blame was a toff, too!” said Mary. “They’re all alike, and the good dress often hides a dirty hide.”
“Beg pardon, but have ye got anything to ate?” asked Maudie.
“Nothin’ the night,” answered Mary. “Only made the price of my bed for my whole day’s work.”
“Will ye ate something with us?” asked Norah.
“Thank ye,” said Mary Martin, and the three women drew closer to the chop that was roasting on the stove.
III
THE beds in the Rat-pit, forty in all, were in a large chamber upstairs, and each woman had a bed to herself. The lodgers undressed openly, shoved their clothes under the mattresses and slid into bed. One sat down to unlace her boots and fell asleep where she sat; another, a young girl of seventeen or eighteen, fell against the leg of the bed and sank into slumber, her face turned to the roof and her mouth wide open. The girl who had been in prison became suddenly unwell and burst into tears; nobody knew what she was weeping about and nobody enquired.
Maudie, Mary, and Norah slept in three adjoining beds, the Irish girl in the centre. The two older women dropped off to sleep the moment their heads touched the pillows; Norah lay awake gazing at the flickering shadows cast by the solitary gas-jet on the roof of the room. The heat was oppressive, suffocating almost, and not a window in the place was open. Women were still coming in, and only half the bunks in the room were yet occupied. Most of the new-comers were drunk; some sat down or fell on the floor and slept where they had fallen, others threw themselves in on top of the bed and lay there with their clothes on. An old woman whose eye had been blackened in a fight downstairs started to sing “Annie Laurie,” but forgetting what followed the first verse, relapsed into silence.