"I've come from Miss Pritchard's school."
The statement seemed to fill the man with illuminating light.
"Ah, that's just what I thought! D'rectly I see her that's just what I thought. Miss Pritchard's--that's the girls' school on the Brighton road, house is inside a wall. I went there to try to get them for Uncle Tom's Cabin. First the lady said there wasn't to be no flogging, then that she couldn't possibly bring her pupils if there wasn't any chairs for them to sit up. I told Mr Biffin what she said. And he said, well there wasn't any chairs, and there was an end of it."
The woman with the baby interposed an observation.
"We should do better if there was chairs. It isn't likely that the front seat people will want to sit on boards."
The big woman proffered a reminder.
"On the front seats there's baize."
Which the woman with the baby spurned.
"What's baize?"
The man addressed himself to me. He was a thin man, with iron-grey hair, and there was something about his face which made me think that though he was untidy, and I wished he would not wear such a very greasy cap, I might induce myself in time to like him. Never once did he remove his pipe from his mouth, nor his hands from his trouser pockets.