I went over into a dark corner where I had observed other men going and found the water. Then I returned and attacked the skilly. It was coarse of texture, unseasoned, gross, and bitter. This bitterness which lingered persistently in the mouth after the skilly had passed on, I found especially repulsive. I struggled manfully, but was mastered by my qualms, and half-a-dozen mouthfuls of skilly and bread was the measure of my success. The man beside me ate his own share, and mine to boot, scraped the pannikins, and looked hungrily for more. “I met a ‘towny,’ and he stood me too good a dinner,” I explained. “An’ I ’aven’t ’ad a bite since yesterday mornin’,” he replied. “How about tobacco?” I asked. “Will the bloke bother with a fellow now?” “Oh no,” he answered me. “No bloomin’ fear. This is the easiest spike goin’. Y’oughto see some of them. Search you to the skin.” The pannikins scraped clean, conversation began to spring up. “This super’tendent ’ere is always writin’ to the papers ’bout us mugs,” said the man on the other side of me. “What does he say?” I asked. “Oh, ’e sez we’re no good, a lot o’ blackguards an’ scoundrels as won’t work. Tells all the ole tricks I’ve bin ’earin’ for twenty years an’ w’ich I never seen a mug ever do. Las’ thing of ’is I see, ’e was tellin’ ’ow a mug gets out o’ the spike, wi’ a crust in ’is pockit. An’ w’en ’e sees a nice ole gentleman comin’ along the street ’e chucks the crust into the drain, an’ borrows the old gent’s stick to poke it out. An’ then the ole gent gi’es ’im a tanner.” A roar of applause greeted the time-honoured yarn, and from somewhere over in the deeper darkness came another voice, orating angrily: “Talk o’ the country bein’ good for tommy [food]; I’d like to see it. I jest came up from Dover, an’ blessed little tommy I got. They won’t gi’ ye a drink o’ water, they won’t, much less tommy.” “There’s mugs never go out of Kent,” spoke a second voice, “they live bloomin’ fat all along.” “I come through Kent,” went on the first voice, still more angrily, “an’ Gawd blimey if I see any tommy. An’ I always notices as the blokes as talks about ’ow much they can get, w’en they’re in the spike can eat my share o’ skilly as well as their bleedin’ own.” “There’s chaps in London,” said a man across the table from me, “that get all the tommy they want, an’ they never think o’ goin’ to the country. Stay in London the year ’round. Nor do they think of lookin’ for a kip [place to sleep], till nine or ten o’clock at night.” A general chorus verified this statement. “But they’re bloomin’ clever, them chaps,” said an admiring voice. “Course they are,” said another voice. “But it’s not the likes of me an’ you can do it. You got to be born to it, I say. Them chaps ’ave ben openin’ cabs an’ sellin’ papers since the day they was born, an’ their fathers an’ mothers before ’em. It’s all in the trainin’, I say, an’ the likes of me an’ you ’ud starve at it.”