“It’s gels’ work, not men’s.”
“We don’t ’ave girls in Collingwood,” said his foster-mother.
“Good job too.”
“And so I expect my boys to give me all the help about the house that they can, you see. They’ll be back from school and the workshops presently, and then you’ll meet ’em all.”
“That’ll be a treat,” said the boy, satirically. “What’s your name?”
“You’ll call me ‘mother,’ and you’ll call my ’usband ’father.’”
“Got some brawsted silly notions down ’ere,” he said.
“Use a word like that again, my boy,” said his foster-mother, with severity, “and you’ll ’ave rice instead of meat for dinner.”
“Like what?” asked the boy, astonished. The foster-mother spelt the word. “Not say brawsted,” echoed Bobbie, amazedly. “Why, what can you say?”
Limitations of speech afflicted Bobbie sorely when the thirty boys trooped into Collingwood from school and from work, jostling him as they took their places at the dinner-table. He had become so accustomed to the use of expressive words, here tabooed, that it was not easy for him to find effective substitutes. The boys aggravated him, too, by the excellence of their spirits; to look at them and to hear them talk, one would imagine this to be the brightest and cheeriest spot on earth; Bobbie made up his mind to correct this want of balance by surly and (when opportunity should offer) aggressive behaviour. He sat at the table gloomily, and when the foster-father, who brought to the dining-room a scent of shavings, rallied him, making a mild joke upon his Christian name (affecting to mistake Bobbie for a City policeman), the boy declined to join in the laugh, and scowled persistently.