Cake took a short step forward. That thing beneath her prominent breastbone pained her violently, forced her on to speak.
"You learn me," she said.
The lodger ceased to chew and stared, the chop bone uplifted in his dirty hand. A pupil for him!
"You want to do this perhaps," he began. "Pray do not mock me; I am a very foolish, fond old man——"
The disreputable, swollen-faced lodger with a nose like a poisoned toadstool vanished. Cake saw an old white-haired man, crazy and pitiful, yet bearing himself grandly. She gasped, the tears flew to her eyes, blinding her. The lodger laughed disagreeably, he was gnawing on the chop bone again.
"I suppose you think because you've found me here it is likely I'll teach you—you! You starved alley cat!" he snarled.
Cake did not even blink. It is repetition that dulls, and she was utterly familiar with abuse.
"And suppose I did—'learn' you," he sneered, "what would you do with it?"
"I would be famous," cried Cake.
Then the lodger did laugh, looking at her with his head hanging down, his swollen face all creased and purple, his hair sticking up rough and unkempt. He laughed, sitting there a degraded, debauched ruin, looking down from the height of his memories upon the gaunt, unlovely child of the slums who was rendered even more unlovely by the very courage that kept her waiting beside the broken door.