"Oh, I'm all right. There's never much the matter with me. I can't afford the time to be ill." She laughed again. "Well, this is a start my meeting you. Come and have a bit o' dinner along with us."
"Who is us? Your father and your mother?"
"Why, father, he's been dead these five years, and mother, she's been dead these three. I don't want you to have a bit of dinner along with them--not hardly." Again she laughed. "It's my old man I mean. Why, you don't mean to say you don't know I'm married! Why, I'm the mother of five."
He had fallen in at her side. They were walking on together--he like a man in a dream.
"We're doing pretty well considering, we manage to live, you know." She laughed again. She seemed filled with laughter, which was more than Mr. Gibbs was then. "We're fishmongers, that's what we are. William he's got a very tidy trade, as good as any in the road. There, here's our shop!" She paused in front of a fishmonger's shop. "And there's our name"--she pointed up at it. "Nelly Brock I used to be, and now I'm Mrs. William Morgan."
She laughed again. She led the way through the shop to a little room beyond. A man was seated on the table, reading a newspaper, a man without a coat on, and with a blue apron tied about his waist.
"William, who do you think I've brought to see you? You'll never guess in a month of Sundays. This is Tom Gibbs, of whom you've heard me speak dozens of times."
Mr. Morgan wiped his hand upon his apron.
Then he held it out to Mr. Gibbs. Mr. Gibbs was conscious, as he grasped it, that it reeked of fish.
"How are you, Gibbs? Glad to see you!" Mr. Morgan turned to his wife. "Where's that George? There's a pair of soles got to be sent up to Sydney Street, and there's not a soul about the place to take 'em."