"On the stairs, then." This assent is really because both women believe he will be comfortabler there than in the room. "Where are you going to sleep?" Rosalind asks, as he takes the cake and tumbler away to the stairs. She puts a gas-jet on half-cock.
"Twopenny doss in Spur Street, off of 'Orseferry Road, Westminster." This identification is to help Rosalind, as she may not be able to spot this particular doss-house among all she knows.
"Do you always sleep there?"
"No, missis! Weather permitting, in our mooze—on the 'eap. The 'orse-keeper gives a sack in return for a bit of cleanin', early, before comin' away."
"What are you?" says Rosalind. She is thinking aloud more than asking a question. But the boy answers:
"I'm a wife, I am. Never learned no tride, ye see!... Oh yes; I've been to school—board-school scollard. But they don't learn you no tride. You parses your standards and chucks 'em." This incredible boy, who deliberately called himself a waif (that was his meaning), was it possible that he had passed through a board-school? Well, perhaps he was the highest type of competitive examinee, who can learn everything and forget everything.
"But you have a father?"
"I could show him you. But he don't hold with teachin' his sons trides, by reason of their gettin' some of his wiges. He's in the sanitary engineering himself, but he don't do no work." Rosalind looks puzzled. "That's his tride—sanitary engineering, lavatries, plumbin', and fittin'. Been out of work better than three years. He can jint you off puppies' tails, though, at a shillin'. But he don't only get a light job now and again, 'cos the tride ain't wot it was. They've been shearin' of 'em off of late years. Thank you, missis." The refreshments have vanished as by magic, and Rosalind gives the boy the rest of the cake and a coin, and he goes away presumably to the doss-house he smells so strong of, having been warmed, that a flavour of the heap in the mews would have been welcome in exchange. So Rosalind thinks as she opens the window a moment and looks out. She can quite see the houses opposite. The fog has cleared till the morning.
Perhaps it is the relenting of the atmospheric conditions, or perhaps it is the oxygen that the patient has been inhaling off and on, that has slightly revived him. Or perhaps it is the champagne that comes up through a tap in the cork, and reminds Rosalind's ill-slept brain of something heard very lately—what on earth exactly was it? Oh, she knows! Of course, the thing in the street the sanitary engineer's son drew the pails of water at for the house with the balcony. It is pleasanter to know; might have fidgeted her if she had not found out. But she is badly in want of sleep, that's the truth!