Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/66

 down like a parrot's beak, and round whitish eyes. In his aged and unbuttoned suit of grey, with his head held rather to one side, he looked like a parrot—a bird clinging to its perch, with one grey leg shortened and crumpled against the other. He talked, too, in a toneless, equable voice, looking sideways at the fire, above the rims of dim spectacles, and now and then smiling with a peculiar disenchanted patience.

No—he said—it was no use to complain; did no good! Things had been like this for years, and so, he had no doubt, they always would be. There had never been much in trousers; not this common sort that anybody'd wear, as you might say. Though he'd never seen anybody wearing such things; and where they went to he didn't know—out of England, he should think. Yes, he had been a carman; ran over by a dray. Oh! yes, they had given him something—four bob a week; but the old man had died and the four bob had died too. Still, there he was, sixty years old—not so very bad for his age

They were talking, he had heard said, about doing something for trousers. But what could you do for things like these, at half a crown a pair? People must have 'em, so you'd got to make 'em. There you were, and there you would be! She went and heard them talk. They talked very well, she said. It was intellectual for her to go. He couldn't go himself owing to his leg. He'd like to hear them talk. Oh, yes! and he was silent, staring sideways at the fire as though in the thin crackle of the flames attacking the fresh piece of wood, he were hearing the echo of that talk from which he was cut off. "Lor' bless you!" he said suddenly. "They'll do nothing! Can't!" And, stretching out his dirty hand he took from