Page:The White Peacock, Lawrence, 1911.djvu/317

Rh startling accounts of Japanese and Chinese prostitutes in Liverpool. After this the talk split up: a farmer began to counsel George how to manage the farm attached to the Inn, another bargained with him about horses, and argued about cattle, a tailor advised him thickly to speculate, and unfolded a fine secret by which a man might make money, if he had the go to do it—so on, till eleven o’clock. Then Bill came and called “time!” and the place was empty, and the room shivered as a little fresh air came in between the foul tobacco smoke, and smell of drink, and foul breath.

We were both affected by the whisky we had drunk. I was ashamed to find that when I put out my hand to take my glass, or to strike a match, I missed my mark, and fumbled; my hands seemed hardly to belong to me, and my feet were not much more sure. Yet I was acutely conscious of every change in myself and in him; it seemed as if I could make my body drunk, but could never intoxicate my mind, which roused itself and kept the sharpest guard. George was frankly half drunk: his eyelids sloped over his eyes and his speech was thick; when he put out his hand he knocked over his glass, and the stuff was spilled all over the table; he only laughed. I, too, felt a great prompting to giggle on every occasion, and I marvelled at myself.

Meg came into the room when all the men had gone.

“Come on, my duck,” he said, waving his arm with the generous flourish of a tipsy man. “Come an’ sit ’ere.”

“Shan’t you come in th’ kitchen?” she asked, looking round on the tables where pots and glasses stood