Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. I, 1889.djvu/65

 road clear. Fifteen bob! What was the use o' me standin' there, outside the crowd? What was the use, I say? Such a lot o' poor starvin' devils you never saw brought together in all your life. There they was, lookin' ready to fight with one another for the fifteen bob a week. Didn't I come back an' tell you about it, mother? An' if they'd all felt like me, they'd a turned against the shop an' smashed it up,—ay, an' every other shop in the street! What use? Why, no use; but I tell you that's how I felt. If any man had said as much as a rough word to me, I'd a gone at him like a bulldog. I felt like a beast. I wanted to fight, I tell you,—to fight till the life was kicked an' throttled out of me!"

"John, don't, don't go on in that way," cried his wife, sobbing miserably. "Don't let him go on like that, Sidney."

Hewett jumped up and walked about.

"What's the time?" he asked the next moment. And when Sidney told him that it was half-past nine, he exclaimed, "Then