Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/89

77 dull, languorous lethargy, not unsweet, and in my very bones, making me altogether indifferent to everything save a sort of aching hunger, which at last drove me out of bed to the table for the half-pound of dates and the loaf I had bought last afternoon. I got them: went back into bed again, and, I suppose, ate them. When I awoke it was evening, the gas-lamp lighting up a part of the far end of the room. I felt flushed with the hunger still in me, and became aware of many troublous crumbs in the sheets and some date-stones, but of neither bread nor dates. In a little I got up, and washed and dressed slowly and listlessly, with the dull hunger ever in me. Now I would go out, I thought. I went to the door, opened it, and heard a voice say:

'Well, I can't help it, you must go!' It was Mrs. Smith's voice, harder and drier than usual.

Another answered some soft, pleading words. I leant against the door-post, rather exhausted, scarcely knowing why I stayed there.

A pause. Then:

'You know it's the second week owing,' pursued Mrs. Smith, 'I can't do it any more, and what's more, I won't! So there!… You must give me something, or you must go, that's all.'

'I've only got a shilling,' said the other voice, 'I gave it you. Won't you wait till the end of the week, Mrs. Smith? 'I shall have my wages then?'

'You said that last week! No, not I! Tick's not nat'ral to me, I say. I'm a lone widdy woman, I am, but I pays my way, and why don't every one, I want to know?… Why didn't you pay me last week, then.?'

'I was ill. I had to pay for the medicine.'

'Drat the medicine! You shouldn't be ill.… Come now, what are you going to do? Look sharp. Don't go and be blubbering now. It's no go with me, young woman—that!' Another pause.

'I've never blubbered to you, Mrs. Smith. I asked you to wait a bit, that's all. I'm down on my luck, that's what I am. A lady took a piece of work I did