“Ho, yuss! ’Cause ’e’s got on a nigh ’at, ’e thinks the ’ole bloomin’ ’bus berlongs ter rim! Yuss hindeed.”
I was covered with confusion, and vainly tried to quiet her, but the unlucky young “toff” made matters worse by defending himself.
“Well,” he said fiercely, “he has no right to block the whole staircase!”
“No, in course not!” agreed Belinda Ann, with dangerous politeness and withering sarcasm. “Most inconsidrate I calls it. Boo—hoo—hoo—oo!”
The war-cry was taken up all round till its unfortunate victim was only too glad to hide his diminished head in its despised “topper” anywhere “out of the four-mile radius” of the savage whoops with which the neighbourhood fairly rang.
As for me, I sat in my corner scarlet with embarrassment and an hysterical desire to laugh, and was thankful when at last the omnibus moved off.
The rest of the journey was accomplished in peace, but we still had some distance to walk when we got out and joined the throng of happy, careless, jovial holiday-makers trudging along in the sun.
The crowd was a queer mixture of West and East, grand ladies in the most fashionable toilettes being obliged to elbow their way through the friendly costers and merry factory girls amid a chorus of “What ho! What price me? ’Ow’s thet fur style?” and so on.
I was thankful that so far I had escaped their embarrassing notice, and kept close to Belinda as we streamed over a level crossing and approached the water’s edge.
Do not suppose she was dumb all this while. Far from it, for she it was who led the various war-cries, and, as she would have termed it, “kept her end up”; but in the midst of her wildest sallies, she never forgot me, and more than once when some rough girls and men jostled against me unnecessarily, she gave them “what for!” vigorously.