Page:London - The People of the Abyss.djvu/134

104 A roar of applause greeted the time-honored yarn, and from somewhere over in the deeper darkness came another voice, orating angrily:

"Talk o' the country bein good for tommy [food]. I'd like to see it. I jest came up from Dover, an' blessed little tommy I got. They won't gi' ye a drink o' water, they won't, much less tommy."

"There's mugs never go out of Kent," spoke a second voice, "an' they live bloomin' fat all along."

"I come through Kent," went on the first voice, still more angrily, "an' Gawd blimey if I see any tommy. An' I always notices as the blokes as talks about 'ow much they can get, w'en they're in the spike can eat my share o' skilly as well as their bleedin' own."

"There's chaps in London," said a man across the table from me, "that get all the tommy they want, an' they never think o' goin' to the country. Stay in London the year round. Nor do they think of lookin for a kip [place to sleep], till nine or ten o'clock at night."

A general chorus verified this statement.

"But they're bloody clever, them chaps," said an admiring voice.

"Course they are," said another voice. "But it's not the likes of me an' you can do it. You got to be born to it, I say. Them chaps 'ave ben openin' cabs an' sellin' papers since the day they was born,