Page:A Child of the Jago - Arthur Morrison.djvu/333

 The surgeon was a young man, but Shoreditch had helped him over most of his enthusiasms. "That's right," he said, "quite right. People are so very genteel, aren't they?" He laughed, as at a droll remembrance. "But, hang it all, men like ourselves needn't talk as though the world was built of hardbake. It's a mighty relief to speak truth with a man who knows—a man not rotted through with sentiment. Think how few men we trust with the power to give a fellow creature a year in gaol, and how carefully we pick them! Even damnation is out of fashion, I believe, among theologians. But any noxious wretch may damn human souls to the Jago, one after another, year in year out, and we respect his right: his sacred right."

At the "Posties" the two men separated. The rain, which had abated for a space, came up on a driving wind, and whipped Dicky Perrott home to meet his new brother.