Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. II, 1889.djvu/24

 him. How I did laugh! Last Christmas Day they smashed up their ’ome an’ threw the bits out into the street. Jack got one of his eyes knocked out,—I thought I should a’ died o’ laughin’ when I saw him next mornin’.”

The hearer became uproarious in merriment.

“Tell you what it is, Clem,” he cried, “you’re something like a girl! Darn me if I don’t like you! I say, I wonder what my daughters grown up? Like her mother, I suppose. You an’ she was sort of sisters, wasn’t you?”

He observed her closely. Clem laughed and shrugged her shoulders.

“Queer sort o’ sisters. She was a bit too quiet-like for me. There never was no fun in her.”

“Aye, like her mother. And where did you say she went to with the old man?”

“Where she went to?” repeated Clem, regarding him steadily with her big eyes, “I never said nothing about it, ‘cause I didn’t know.”

“Well, I shan’t cry about her, and I don’t