He drew her to him and kissed her through the bars. Instantly the sound was re-echoed a hundred times, distorted and vulgarized, throughout the ward. In the silence which followed Emily's first words, the sweethearts had forgotten their audience of thieves and cutthroats, to whom every syllable was audible. Hierarchs of sin, virtuosos in infamy, all the demon in their souls seemed roused by this innocent pledge of mutual faith between youth and maiden, and even the stern threats of Gradger could not silence their outbreak of hideous derision.
Emily started back as red as fire.
"Go, darling," cried Robert, between his set teeth, while shouts of "Ta, ta, Robert," "Kiss me, Emily," intermingled with the foul ribaldry generated in minds shut away from all purifying touch of womanhood, taunted the fleeing girl and roused her imprisoned lover's passion to frenzy. He could have strangled three of them single-handed.
"Better call daytimes, miss, when the men are working in the shops," said Gradger. He had not taken Emily for a girl who herself had to work daytimes in a shop.
Meanwhile the storm raged louder and louder, and several turnkeys were called to quell the disturbance and carry the ringleaders away to the "block." But the more it volleyed around him the cooler grew young Floyd. His resentment gradually hardened to a kind of pitying scorn, and when the last oath died away it was with sweeter thoughts that he had indulged for three bitter nights that he laid his head on the pallet and drowsed into oblivion. His pillow lay close to the point of the wall where Dobbs liked to do his talking, and while the midnight bell was ringing he thought he heard the cracksman whisper:
"The young lady stretched it, chummy. You 'ave one friend 'ere. Let 'em screech their bloomin' lungs off."
But this may have been a dream.