Page:A Child of the Jago - Arthur Morrison.djvu/46

 The East End, he was convinced, was not so black as it was painted (applause). He had but to look about him—et cetera, et cetera. He questioned whether so well-conducted, morally-given and respectable a gathering could be brought together in any West End parish with which he was acquainted. It was his most pleasant duty on this occasion—and so on and so forth.

Dicky Perrott had found the cake. It was in a much smaller room at the back of the hall, wherein it was expected that the Bishop and certain Eminences of the platform would refresh themselves with tea after the ceremony. There were heavy drooping curtains at the door of this room, and deep from the largest folds the ratling from the Jago watched. The table was guarded by a sour-faced man—just such a man as drove him from the window of the cake-shop in Shoreditch High Street. Nobody else was there yet, and plainly the sour-faced man must be