“You thought you was going to have a ’igh old time,” retorted the Duchess, “and you’re disappointed. Moment the money was spent you were going to turn the poor boy out neck and crop.”
“Don’t you measure other ladies by yourself, ma’am,” shouted Mrs. Rastin. “You’re nothing more nor less than—”
“Come on,” said the Duchess’s husband.
“But,” urged the trembling Duchess, “did you ’ear what she called me?”
“What’s it matter?” remarked the man.
Bobbie, helping to push one of the barrows through the Walk, had the happy feeling that he had really been the cause of the disturbance, and that he was engaged in making history very fast. Trixie Bell’s mother, standing at the door of her small bonnet shop, shook her head dolefully as she saw him; Bobbie make a grimace at her that checked the excellent woman’s sympathy. Behind the shop window Trixie Bell herself looked out between the ostrich-feathered hats with round, astonished eyes.
“What’s the number, Leigh?”
Mr. Leigh gave the information as the two barrows turned from Hoxton Street into Ely Place. Ely Place had more breadth than Pimlico Walk, but it was a grim, mysterious thoroughfare, it had none of the shops which served to make Pimlico Walk interesting; certainly a few of the cottages had a plot in front with a slate-coloured lawn, but these were in every case flagged with imperfect drying linen that destroyed any pretence of rusticity. Before one of these the barrows stopped.
A long young woman with sleeves folded back high above her elbow, her red hair in a single knot, swept the step casually with a bald broom.
“’Ullo,” she said, “you’ve arrived, then?”