They were to live under the church itself; to give bread to the hungry and clothes to the naked; to set up their Settlement in the gaming-house of the Sharkeys, now deserted and shut up; to take in the undeserving poor-the people who had nothing to say for themselves, precisely those; and thus they were to show that they belonged neither to the publicans and sinners nor to the Scribes and Pharisees.
“Only let us get rid of self. Only let us show that self-interest never enters our head in one single thing we do——” and meantime Glory, who had turned her head aside with a lump in her throat, heard some one behind them saying:
“Lawd, Jow, that's the curick and his dorg—'im as got pore Sharkey took! See—'im with the laidy?”
“S'elp me, so it is! Another good man gorn to 'is gruel, and all 'long of a bloomin' dorg.”
They walked round by the church. John was talking—rapturously at every step, and Glory was dragging after him like a criminal going to the pillory. At last they came out by Great Smith Street, and he cried: “See, there's the house of God under its spider's web of scaffolding, and here's the Broad Sanctuary—broad enough in all conscience! Look!”
A crowd of girls and men were trooping out of a place of entertainment opposite, and there were screams and curses. “Look at 'im!” cried a woman's voice. “There 'e is, the swine! And 'e was the ruin of me; and now 'e's 'listed for a soldier and going off with another woman!”
“You're bleedin' drunk, that's what you are!” said a man's voice, “and if you down't take kear I'll send ye 'ome on a dawer!”
“Strike me, will ye, ye dog? Do it! I dare you!”
“She ain't worth it, soldier—come along,” said another female voice, whereupon the first broke into a hurricane of oaths; and a little clergyman going by at the moment—it was the Rev. J. Golightly—said: “Dear, dear! Are there no policemen about?” and so passed on, with his tall wife tucked under his arm.
John Storm pressed through the crowd and came between the two who were quarrelling. By the light of the lamp he could see them. The man was Charlie Wilkes, in the uniform of a soldier; the woman, with the paint running on her face, her fringe disordered, and her back hair torn down, was Aggie Jones.