"Almost make you think us wasn't human beings."
The drums and fifes strike up briskly, and play a merry march.
Some one or other, somewhere in the crowd, sets up a loud, crowing sort of cheer.
"Hip! hip! hooray!"
And the others join in. It spreads all down the whole length of the street, and does not die down again. But it leaves my yokel unmoved.
"What's the good of that how-d'ye-do? Folks are fair crazed. There is no sense in it."
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. He is impenetrably rapt in his own gloomy reflections. Then he begins again.
"Ah've left a wife and three kids to home. They're to get a few pence a day, the lot, and nought more. And that's what four people have got to live on."
Some one tries to cheer him up.
"Then some one else'll turn up who'll look after 'em!"