I would have given the woman some, but I had none. I had left it behind when I changed my clothes for dinner. She heard Dick's answer to me plainly, and it exasperated her. All the natural, florid, unstudied eloquence of the lower orders was at her command, and well-turned periods of perfect abuse and neat incisive remarks upon our characters, our persons and attributes generally, rippled in a smooth, unbroken stream from her lips as she followed us. Just at that moment there was not a policeman nor any other being within sight.
We walked on, and the woman's curses and imprecations upon us filled the grey silence of the street. At last a porter on his way to work passed us, and she transferred her attentions and oratory to him. Dick glanced at me and laughed.
"Well, there was an extensive vocabulary, Victor! How would some of those words sound in your fiancee's mouth?"
I laughed too.
"You always were good at a sophistical sneer, but vile language has nothing to do with what I was talking about."
"No; of course not. It does strike one as curious, doesn't it," he added after a minute, "that a creature like that and the girl we have been with this evening can belong to the same sex."
"Well, I don't know," I answered; "I know there is the sort of idea that it is funny, but somehow it does not strike me more with reference to woman than to ourselves. I mean it does not seem more incongruous than that a man like yourself and an offal sweeper belong to the same sex."
"No; perhaps not. One of those houses is yours, isn't it?" Dick said.
"Yes; number 2," I answered, as we went up to the door.
"They seem to have turned the light out."