Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. II, 1889.djvu/23

 Who is it you’re keeping company with now?”

“Who, indeed? Why, there isn’t one I’d look at! Several of ’em’s took to drinking ‘cause I won’t have nothing to do with ’em.”

This excited Mr. Snowdon’s mirth in a high degree; he rolled on his chair, and almost pitched backwards.

“I suppose you give one or other a bit of encouragement now and then, just to make a fool of him, eh?”

“Course I do. There was Bob Hewett; he used to lodge here, but that was after your time. I kep’ him off an’ on till he couldn’t bear it no longer; then he went an’ married a common slut of a thing, just because he thought it ‘ud make me mad. Ha, ha! I believe he’d give her poison an’ risk it any day, if only I promised to marry him afterwards. Then there was a feller called Jeck Bartley. I set him an’ Bob fightin’ one Bank-holiday,—you should a’ seen ’em go at it! Jack went an’ got married a year ago to a girl called Suke Jollop; her mother forced