Page:A Child of the Jago - Arthur Morrison.djvu/65

 form, everybody was free to lay hold of whatever came handy.

In Old Jago Street, half-way between Jago Court and Edge Lane, stood the Feathers, the grimiest and vilest of the four public-houses in the Jago. Into the Feathers some dozen Learys were driven, and for a while they held the inner bar and the tap-room against the Ranns, who swarmed after them, chairs, bottles and pewter pots flying thick, while Mother Gapp, the landlady, hung hysterical on the beer pulls in the bar, supplicating and blubbering aloud. Then a partition came down with a crash, bringing shelves and many glasses with it, and the Ranns rushed over the ruin, beating the Learys down, jumping on them, heaving them through the back windows. Having thus cleared the house of the intruding enemy, the Ranns demanded recompense of liquor, and took it, dragging handles off beer engines, seizing bottles, breaking into the