He is all the easier for examination from the fact that he is impressed, if not awed, by his surroundings. All the bounce is knocked out of him, now that his foot is no longer on his native heath, the street. Witness that the subject of his narrative, who would certainly have been the old bloke where there was a paling to suck, has become a simple pronoun, and no more! "I see him afore, missis," he says. "That time wot I lighted him round for twopence. And he says to come again in three-quarters of an hour. And I says yes, I says. And he says not to be late. Nor yet I shouldn't, only the water run so slow off the main, and I was kep.... Yes, missis--a drorin' of it off in their own pails at the balkny house by the mooze, where the supply is froze...." "I see, you got a job to carry up pails of water from that thing that sticks up in the road?" "Yes, missis; by means of the turncock. Sim'lar I got wet. But I didn't go to be late. It warn't much, in the manner of speakin'. I was on his 'eels, clost." "You caught him?" "Heard him hoarckin' in the fog, and I says to my mate--boy by the name of 'Ucklebridge, only chiefly called Slimy, to distinguish him--I says--I says that was my guv'nor, safe and square, by the token of the sound of it. And then I catches him up in the fog, follerin' by the sound. My word, missis, he _was_ bad! Wanted to holler me over the coals, he did, for behind my time. I could hear him wantin' to do it. But he couldn't come by the breath." Poor Old Jack! The two women look at each other, and then say to the boy: "Go on." "Holdin' by the palins, he was, and goin' slow. Then he choked it off like, and got a chanst for a word, and he says: 'Now, you young see-saw'--that's what he said, missis, 'see-saw'--'just you stir your stumps and cut along to the clubbus: and tell that dam red-faced fool Mulberry to look sharp and send one of the young fellers to lend an arm, and not to come hisself.' And then he got out a little flat bottle of something short, and went for a nip; but the cough took him, and it sprouted over his wropper and was wasted." The women look at each other again. The nurse sees well into the story, and says quickly under her breath to Rosalind: "He'd been told what to do if he felt it coming. A drop of brandy might have made the difference." The boy goes on as soon as he is waited for. "Mr. Mulberry he comes runnin' hisself, and a couple more on 'em! And then they all calls me a young varmint by reason of the guv'nor having got lost. But a gentleman what comes up, he says all go opposite ways, he says, and you'll hear him in the fog. So I runs up a parsage, and in the middle of the parsage I tumbles over the guv'nor lyin' acrost the parsage. Then I hollers, and then they come."