Page:The Inner House.djvu/147

Rh yourself—would become no better than the Common People. You do well to be zealous."

John Lax nodded his head. He was a taciturn man habitually; but now he became loquacious. He stopped the grindstone, laid down the axe, and rammed his hands into his pockets.

"When I see them women dressed up like swells—" he began, grinning.

"John, this kind of language belongs to the old days, when even speech was unequal."

"No matter; you understand it. Lord! Sammy Grout, the brewer's boy—we were both Whitechapel pets; but I was an old 'un of five and thirty, while you were on'y beginning to walk the Waste with a gal on your arm—p'r'aps—and a ha'penny fag in your mouth. Hold on, now. It's like this—"

What with the insolence of Dr. Linister, and the sight of the old dresses, and the sound of the old language, I myself was carried away. Yes, I was once more Sam Grout; again I walked upon the pavement of the Whitechapel Road; again I was a boy in the great brewery of Mile End Road.

"Go on, John Lax," I said, with condescension. "Revive, if it is possible, something of the Past. I give you full leave. But when you come to the Present, forget not the reverence due to the Suffragan."

"Right, guv'nor. Well, then, it's like this. I see them men and women dressed up in the old fallals, and goin' on like I've seen 'em goin' on long ago with their insolence and their haw-haws—damn 'em—and all the old feelings came back to me, and I thought I was spoutin' again on a Sunday mornin', and askin' my fellow-countrymen if they always meant to sit down and be slaves. And the memory came back to me—ah! proper it did—of a