Page:A Child of the Jago - Arthur Morrison.djvu/149

 it seemed pretty plain to Josh that the baby was out of sorts. "She's rum about the eyes," he said to his wife. "Blimy if she don't look as though she was goin' to squint."

Josh was never particularly solicitous as to the children, but he saw that they were fed and clothed—perhaps by mere force of the habit of his more reputable days of plastering. He had brought home tripe, rolled in paper, and stuffed into his coat pocket, to make a supper on the strength of the day's stroke of business. When this tripe was boiled, he and Dicky essayed to drive morsels into Looey's mouth, and to wash them down with beer; but to no end but choking rejection. Whereat Josh decided that she must go to the dispensary in the morning. And in the morning he took her, with Dicky at his heels; for not only did his wife still nurse her neck, but in truth she feared to venture abroad. The dispensary was no charitable