Mercy trembled and held down her head. They jogged on awhile in silence, and then the driver, who had cast furtive glances at the girl, drew rein, and said: "I'm wexed as I said Tom Crow was as blind as a mole. How-and-ever, a mole ain't blind, and it's on'y them coster chaps as think so, but I've caught a many of 'em out ferning. Besides, Tom was a-worrited with his missus, Tom was, and happen that was worse nor his cold.
("Git along, you old perwerse old file!)
"You see, Tom's missus cut away and left him. As young as you, and maybe as good to look at, but a bad 'un; and she broke Tom's heart, as the saying is. So Tom left the ferning. He hadn't no heart for it. Ferning's a thing as wants heart, it do. He started costering first, and now Tom's got a 'tater-ingine, on'y being as he's blind he has a boy to wheel it. And that woman, she done it all. 'Jim Groundsell,' he says to me—that's my name—'Jim,' he says, 'don't fix your heart on nothing,' he says, 'and keep to your sight and the ferning.'
("Well, you perwerse old crutch! Get along with you!)
"But I went and done it myself. And now my missus, she's a invalide, as they say, and she ain't out o' bed this twelvemonth come Christmas, and she gets lonesome lying all by herself, and frets a bit maybe, and—
("Git along, will you, you wexing old fence!")
There was a long silence this time. They were leaving the green fields behind them, and driving through longer streets than Mercy had ever seen before. Though the sun was shining feebly, the lamps on the pavement were still burning. They passed a church, and Mercy saw by the clock that it was hard on eight. They drove briskly through Camden Town into St. Giles's, and so on to Long Acre.
The streets were thronged by this time. Troops of people were passing to and fro. Cabs and omnibuses were rattling hither and thither. At every turn the crowd became denser and the noise louder. Mercy sat in her corner, bewildered. The strange city frightened her. For the time it drove away the memory of her sorrow.
When they reached Covent Garden, Jim, the driver, drew up with a jerk, and nodded to some of the drivers of similar wagons, and hailed others with a lusty shout. All was a babel to the girl's dazed sense: laughter, curses, yelling, whooping, quarreling.
Mercy's head ached. She got down, hardly knowing what to do next. Where was she to go? In that wilderness of London, more desolate than the trackless desert, what was she?