Page:A Child of the Jago - Arthur Morrison.djvu/409

 never do for mother and the children to be left helpless. How good for them all to go off easily together, and wake in some pleasant place, say a place like Father Sturt's sitting room, and perhaps find—but there, what foolishness!

What was this unendurable stupor that clung about him like a net? He knew everything clearly enough, but it was all in an atmosphere of dull heedlessness. There would be some relief in doing something violent—in smashing something to little pieces with a hammer.

He came to the ruined houses. There was a tumult of yells, and a crowd of thirty or forty lads went streaming across the open waste, waving sticks.

"Come on! come on, Jago! 'Ere they are!"

A fight! Ah, what more welcome! And Dove Lane, too—Dove Lane that had taken to bawling the taunt, "Jago cut-throats," since. ..