Page:A Child of the Jago - Arthur Morrison.djvu/73

 would want something to eat; it was for that he had left the money. But Dicky was out and there was nothing in the cupboard. From the windows she saw divers fights in Jago Court; and a man lay for near two hours on the stones with a cut on his temple. As for herself, she was no favorite in the neighbourhood at any time. For one thing, her husband did not carry the cosh. Then she was an alien who had never entirely fallen into Jago ways; she had soon grown sluttish and dirty, but she was never drunk, she never quarrelled, she did not gossip freely. Also her husband beat her but rarely, and then not with a chair or a poker. Justly irritated by such superiorities as these, the women of the Jago were ill disposed to brook another; which was that Hannah Perrott had been married in church. For these reasons she was timid at the most peaceful of times, but now, with Ranns and Learys on the war-path, and herself obnoxious to both,