"Oh, you don't, don't you? Well, that's 'andsome! Now, supposing I bash in your 'at?" All at once he made a fresh discovery. "If 'e ain't smashed the blooming box!" He picked up from beside him the box which Stacey-Lumpton had kicked against. "Smashed it right in--straight, 'e 'as! Well, there's a thing to do!" He thrust the box in question between Stacey-Lumpton and myself. "Look 'ere there's bloaters in that box." We did not need his word to make us conscious of that fact. The perfume was enough. Stacey-Lumpton recognised that this was so with, on his face, an expression of speechless horror. "You've busted in the box and spiled the lot of 'em. Who's going to buy bruised bloaters, I'd like to know? I don't mind my 'at so much, but when it comes to bloaters--they're my living."
An interposition from the lady whose bonnet had been "scrunched."
"Parties like him think no more of taking the bread out of the mouths of the struggling poor than if they was insecks!"
Her husband seemed to think the remark slightly uncalled for.
"That's you, Eliza, all over. You must put your spoke in everybody's wheel. You can't keep quiet, can you?"
"It's as well some of us are like that. Some of us would keep quiet till we was dead. I'm not that sort, I thank goodness."
A gentleman on the seat on the other side of the driver, leaning towards me, proffered a suggestion--his accent was distinctly nasal.
"If I vas your vriend I vould gif him a gopper or two to keep him quiet."
At last Stacey-Lumpton found his voice.
"Take that horrible thing away, man."