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One particularly festering day after dinner I had the excitement of quite a pretty little quarrel for dessert. Miss Whiffle had stuffed me with suet, in meat and pudding, to a point of stupefaction that stopped short only of absolute insensibility; and in this state I took up my usual post at the window, awaiting in swollen vacuity the possibilities of the afternoon.

On the horizon violet-hot sea and sky showed scarce a line of demarcation between them. Nearer in the waves snored stertorously from exhausted lungs, as if the very tide were in extremis. Not a breath of air fanned the pitiless Parade, and the sole accent on life came from a droning, monotonous voice pitched from somewhere in querulous complaint.

“Frarsty!” it wailed, “Frarsty! I warnt thee!” and again, “I warnt thee, Frarsty! Frarsty! Frar–r–r–rsty!” drawn out in an inconceivable passionlessness of desire again and again, till I felt myself absorbing the ridiculous yearning for an absurd person and inclined to weep hysterical tears at his unresponsiveness.

Then through the suffocating miasma thridded another sound–the whine of a loafing tramp slowly pleading along the house fronts–vainly, too, as it appeared.

“Friends,” went his formula, nasal and forcibly spasmodic in the best gull-catcher style, “p’raps you will ask why I, a able-bodied man, are asking for ass–ist–ance in your town. Friends, I answer, becorse I cannot get work and becorse I cannot starve. Any honest work I would be thankful for; but no one will give it to me.”

Then followed an elaborate presentation, in singsong verse, of his own undeserved indigence and the brutality of employers, and so the recitation again:–

“Friends, the least ass–ist–ance would be welcome. I am a honest British workman, and employ–ment I cannot ob–tain. You sit in your com–for–ta–ble ‘ouses, and I ask you to ass–ist a fellow creature, driven to this for no fault of his own–for many can ‘elp one where one cannot ‘elp many.”

Then he hove into sight–a gastropodous tub of a fellow, with a rascally red eye; and I shrank behind my curtains, for I never court parley with such gentlemen.

He spotted me, of course,–rogues of his feather have a hawk’s eye for timid quarry,–and his bloated face appeared at the window.

“Sir–friend,” he said, in a confidential, hoarse whisper, “won’t you ‘elp a starvin’ British workman?”

I gave him sixpence, cursing inwardly this my concession to pure timorousness, and the bestial mask of depravity vanished with a grin.

After that I was left to myself, heat and haze alone reigning without; and presently, I think, I must have fallen into a suetty doze, for I was semi-conscious of voices raised in dispute for a length of time, before I roused to the fact that two people were quarrelling just outside my window.

They were a young man–almost a boy–and a girl of about his own age; and both evidently belonged to the labouring classes.

She was, I took occasion to notice, aggressively pretty in that hot red and black style that finds its warmest admirers in a class cultivated above that to which she belonged; and she was scorning and flouting her slow, perplexed swain with that over-measure of vehemence characteristic of a sex devoid of the sense of proportion.

“Aw!” she was saying, as I came into focus of their dispute. “That’s the moral of a mahn, it is. Yer ter work when ye like an’ ter play when ye like, and the girls hahs ter sit and dangle their heels fer yer honours’ convenience.”

“I doan’t arlays get my likes, Jenny, or I shud a’ met you yesterday.”

“Ay, as yer promused.”

“We worked ower late pulling the lias, I tell yer. ‘Twould ‘a’ meant half a day’s wages garn if I’d com’, and theer, my dear, ‘ud been reason for another delay in oor getting spliced.”

“You’re fine and vulgar, upon my word! A little free, too, and a little mistook. I’ve no mind ter get spliced, as yer carls it, wi’ a chap as cannot see’s way ter keep tryst.”