"How's that?"
"Always give 'em a shake-up at four o'clock. Don't make many odds. You just get up and sit down again. Takes the cold out of your bones if it does nothing else."
"I suppose," said Richard, "I couldn't doss down on that board that's perched on the two iron standards up towards Hyde Park Comer. It has a single room touch that I rather fancy."
The constable shook his head.
"I couldn't let you," he said, "though there's no particular harm in it."
"Then what's it for anyway?"
"Don't rightly know. They do say it was for the garden carriers to rest their packs on when they was coming up to market from the outlying farms. And again I been told that they laid the corpses on it what was being carried to the plague pits when there was one of these 'ere epidemics in London. Long while back that 'ud be."
"Hm," said Richard, "cheery sort of memory. Well I'll take a chance with the rest. Good night. Oh, by the way, how's one manage about getting a wash in the mornings?"
"You goes without."
"Well, there's a damn thing," said Richard and departed with a nod.