Schultz, the great German composer, died the day before; it had been in the morning papers. Jimmy said composedly, when I mentioned it: “There’s another of us gone. Lucky devil!” He added a little rebelliously: “It’s rather rough to have to hand in your checks just when you’ve ‘arrived.’ I hope I shan’t be so long about it as the woman at Farthings Farm was. Queer old girl! You’ll make Harrowsmith send in his bill and pay up any little thing I owe. Get the money out of Queenie. That girl’s been a bit shabby. And just roll me a cigarette--there’s enough baccy in the pouch--and leave me alone to worry out this third line.” He was lying at the back; Orion, if you remember, had his bedroom in the front, but Jimmy had turned that into a bathroom. All the Saturday night bubble of the streets came up into the little paneled room where he was dying. He liked it; asked me to open the window, so that he could hear the hoarse voices of the costers and the banter of the women. He liked the rattle of ’buses, the cries, the calls--all the feverish, struggling life. One by one the fellows dropped in as usual. He begged them not to put on such deathbed faces. How had his songs gone? He was afraid that he wouldn’t see Queenie any more. The fellows stayed; he begged them to. I’d asked him if he had any friends that he would like me to send for, and he returned airily that he hadn’t a relative in the world. His face never flinched when he said it. The night went on, and the room, although the month was August, got chilly. The sounds of the market died down, the omnibuses left off running, so did the trams; there was only a dying trundle of hansoms over the stones. Then all at once came a ringing howl from some slum at the back. They have pulled them nearly all down now. All the narrow courts I used to know, the tiny general shops, the row of almshouses, the big boiled-beef shop at the corner--gone. Residential flats are in their place and big shops with sky signs. It was some Saturday-night row. It came in plainly through the open window. Jimmy opened his eyes and listened with zest. You won’t understand the grim sentiment of those slum rows. They are simply part of the Saturday night’s programme--when the man gets his week’s money and the woman goes out shopping and they both are blind drunk by midnight. Simply part of Saturday night--that is all. It does not affect their relations for the rest of the week. The language they use to each other is awful--but what are words? We place too great a stress on mere words. Jimmy roused up a little, and grinned feebly. “Shouldn’t wonder if it’s Mrs. Morey,” he said. We sat and listened to the woman’s shrill, passionate invective--to adjectives which were foreign even to us. We heard the husband’s low, deprecating growl, and, after a little, the protesting bass of the policeman. The woman was infuriated at the interruption.