Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. I, 1889.djvu/106

 herself up with Clem. There was a stormy interview.

"So you thought you'd have yer fling, did you, just because I wasn't 'ere? You must go makin trouble, just to suit yer own fancies! I'll pay you, my lady! Gr-r-r!"

Whereupon followed the smack of a large hand on a fleshy cheek, so vigorous and unexpected a blow that even the sturdy Clem staggered back.

"You leave me alone, will you?" she roared out, her smitten cheek in a flame. "Do that again, an' I'll give you somethin' for yerself! See if I don't! You just try it on!"

The room rang with uproarious abuse, with disgusting language, with the terrific threats which are such common flowers of rhetoric in that world, and generally mean nothing whatever. The end of it all was that Clem went to fetch a doctor, one in whom Mrs. Peckover could repose confidence. The man was, in fact, a druggist, with a shop in an obscure street over towards St. Luke's; in