Presently she went to a cupboard, which is also the coal-hole, and brought out an immense frying-pan, black both inside and out. She heated it till the fat ran; wiped out it with a newspaper; then placed in it three split mackerel. "For Tony's tea," she explained. "He's to sea now with two gen'lemen, but I 'spect he'll be in house sune."
Voices from the passage: "Mam! Tay! Mam, I wants my tay!"
TEA-TIME
A deeper voice: "Missis, wer's my tay? Got ort nice to eat?"
It was Tony himself, accompanied by a small boy and a slightly larger small girl.
"Hullo, sir! Yu'm come then. Do 'ee think you can put up wi' our little shanty? Missis ought to ha' laid for 'ee in the front room. Us got a little parlour, you know.—I be so wet as a drownded corpse, Missis!"
The two children stood on the other side of the table, staring at me as if I were a wild beast behind bars which they scarcely trusted. "'Tis a gen'leman!" exclaimed the girl.
"Coo'h!" the boy ejaculated.
Tony turned on them with make-believe anger: "Why don' 'ee git yer tay? Don' 'ee know 'tis rude to stare?"
"Now then, you children," Mrs Widger continued in a strident voice, buttering two hunks of bread with astonishing rapidity. "Take off thic hat, Mabel. Sit down, Jimmy."