Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/283

Rh “Perhaps not—would you?”

“Pah—let’s go now!—There, you hang back.”

“No I don’t,” she replied sharply.

“Come on then, we’ll go through the twitchel. Let me tell Lettie.”

Lettie at once declared “No!”—with some asperity.

“All right,” said George. “I’ll take you home.” But this suited Lettie still less.

“I don’t know what you want to go for, Cyril,” she said, “and Sunday night, and, everybody everywhere. I want to go home.”

“Well—you go then—Emily will come with you.”

“Ha,” cried the latter, “you think I won’t go to see her.”

I shrugged my shoulders, and George pulled his moustache.

“Well, I don’t care,” declared Lettie, and we marched down the twitchel, Indian file.

We came near to the ugly rows of houses that back up against the pit-hill. Everywhere is black and sooty: the houses are back to back, having only one entrance, which is from a square garden where black-speckled weeds grow sulkily, and which looks on to a row of evil little ash-pit huts. The road everywhere is trodden over with a crust of soot and coal-dust and cinders.

Between the rows, however, was a crowd of women and children, bare heads, bare arms, white aprons, and black Sunday frocks bristling with gimp. One or two men squatted on their heels with their backs against a wall, laughing. The women were waving