LITMIR.BIZ

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(his head emerging from within his overcoat like a tortoise’s from within its shell): “Wassat you said, boy? Paying money for water! How long’ve you bin on the road, you ignorant young scut? Money for bloody water? Bum it, boy, bum it! Don’t buy what you can bum and don’t bum what you can steal. That’s my word—fifty year on the road, man and boy.” (Retires within his coat.)

      Mr. Tallboys (chanting): “O all ye works of the Lord——”

      Deafie (singing): “With my willy willy——”

      Charlie: “ ’Oo was it copped you, Nosy?”

      The Kike: “Oh Je-e-e-eeze!”

      Mrs. Bendigo: “Shove up, shove up! Seems to me some folks think they’ve took a mortgage on this bloody seat.”

      Mr. Tallboys (chanting): “O all ye works of the Lord, curse ye the Lord, curse Him and vilify Him for ever!”

      Mrs. McElligot: “What I always says is, it’s always us poor bloody Catholics dat’s down in de bloody dumps.”

      Nosy Watson: “Smithy. Flying Squad—flying sod! Give us the plans of the house and everything, and then had a van full of coppers waiting and nipped the lot of us. I wrote it up in the Black Maria:

      ‘Detective Smith knows how to gee;

      Tell him he’s a —— from me.’ ”

      Snouter: “ ’Ere, what about our —— tea? Go on, Kikie, you’re a young ’un; shut that —— noise and take the drums. Don’t you pay nothing. Worm it out of the old tart. Snivel. Do the doleful.”

      Mr. Tallboys (chanting): “O all ye children of men, curse ye the Lord, curse Him and vilify Him for ever!”

      Charlie: “What, is Smithy crooked too?”

      Mrs. Bendigo: “I tell you what, girls, I tell you what gets me down, and that’s to think of my bloody husband snoring under four blankets and me freezing in this bloody Square. That’s what I can’t stomach. The unnatural sod!”

      Ginger (singing): “ ‘There they go—in their joy——’ Don’t take that there drum with the cold sausage in it, Kikie.”

      Nosy Watson: “Crooked? Crooked? Why, a corkscrew ’ud look like a bloody bradawl beside of him! There isn’t one of them double —— sons of whores in the Flying Squad but ’ud sell his grandmother to the knackers for two pound ten and then sit on her gravestone eating potato crisps. The geeing, narking toerag!”

      Charlie: “Perishing tough. ’Ow many convictions you got?”

      Ginger (singing):

      “There they go—in their joy—

      ’Appy girl—lucky boy——”

      Nosy Watson: “Fourteen. You don’t stand no chance with that lot against you.”

      Mrs. Wayne: “What, don’t he keep you, then?”

      Mrs. Bendigo: “No, I’m married to this one, sod ’im!”

      Charlie: “I got perishing nine myself.”

      Mr. Tallboys (chanting): “O Ananias, Azarias and Misael, curse ye the Lord, curse Him and vilify Him for ever!”

      Ginger (singing):

      “There they go—in their joy—

      ’Appy girl—lucky boy—

      But ’ere am I-I-I—

      Broken—’a-a-aarted!

      God, I ain’t ’ad a dig in the grave for three days. ’Ow long since you washed your face, Snouter?”

      Mrs. McElligot: “Oh dear, oh dear! If dat boy don’t come soon wid de tea me insides’ll dry up like a bloody kippered herring.”

      Charlie: “You can’t sing, none of you. Ought to ’ear Snouter and me ’long towards Christmas time when we pipe up ‘Good King Wenceslas’ outside the boozers. ’Ymns, too. Blokes in the bar weep their perishing eyes out to ’ear us. ’Member when we tapped twice at the same ’ouse by mistake, Snouter? Old tart fair tore the innards out of us.”

      Mr. Tallboys (marching up and down behind an imaginary drum and singing):

      “All things vile and damnable,

      All creatures great and small——”

      (Big Ben strikes half-past ten.)

      Snouter (mimicking the clock): “Ding dong, ding dong! Six and a —— half hours of it! Cripes!”

      Ginger: “Kikie and me knocked off four of them safety-razor blades in Woolworths’s afternoon. I’ll ’ave a dig in the bleeding fountains to-morrow if I can bum a bit of soap.”

      Deafie: “When I was a stooard in the P. and O., we used to meet them black Indians two days out at sea, in them there great canoes as they call catamarans, catching sea-turtles the size of dinner tables.”

      Mrs. Wayne: “Did you used to be a clergyman, then, sir?”

      Mr. Tallboys (halting): “After the order of Melchizedec. There is no question of ’used to be,’ Madam. Once a priest always a priest. Hoc est corpus hocus pocus. Even though unfrocked—un-Crocked, we call it—and dog-collar publicly torn off by the bishop of the diocese.”

      Ginger (singing): “ ‘There they go—in their joy——’ Thank Christ! ’Ere comes Kikie. Now for the consultation-free!”

      Mrs. Bendigo: “Not before it’s bloody needed.”

      Charlie: “ ’Ow come they give you the sack, mate? Usual story? Choirgirls in the family way?”

      Mrs. McElligot: “You’ve took your time, ain’t you, young man? But come on, let’s have a sup of it before me tongue falls out o’ me bloody mouth.”

      Mrs. Bendigo: “Shove up, Daddy! You’re sitting on my packet of bloody sugar.”

      Mr. Tallboys: “Girls is a euphemism. Only the usual flannel-bloomered hunters of the unmarried clergy. Church hens—altar-dressers and brass-polishers—spinsters growing bony and desperate. There is a demon that enters into them at thirty-five.”

      The Kike: “The old bitch wouldn’t give me the hot water. Had to tap a toff in the street and pay a penny for it.”

      Snouter: “—— likely story! Bin swigging it on the way more likely.”

      Daddy (emerging from his overcoat): “Drum o’ tea, eh? I could sup a drum o’ tea.” (Belches slightly.)

      Charlie: “When their bubs get like perishing razor strops? I know.”

      Nosy Watson: “Tea—bloody catlap. Better’n that cocoa in the stir, though. Lend’s your cup, matie.”

      Ginger: “Jest wait’ll I knock a ’ole in this tin of milk. Shy us a money or your life, someone.”

      Mrs. Bendigo: “Easy with that bloody sugar! ’Oo paid for it, I sh’d like to know?”

      Mr. Tallboys: “When their bubs get like razor strops. I thank thee for that humour. Pippin’s Weekly made quite a feature of the case. ‘Missing Canon’s Sub Rosa Romance. Intimate Revelations.’ And also an Open Letter in John Bull: ‘To a Skunk in Shepherd’s Clothing.’ A pity—I was marked out for preferment. (To Dorothy) Gaiters in the family, if you understand me. You would not think, would you, that the time has been when this unworthy backside dented the plush cushions of a cathedral stall?”

      Charlie: “ ’Ere comes Florry. Thought she’d be along soon as we got the tea going. Got a nose like a perishing vulture for tea, that girl ’as.”

      Snouter: “Ay, always on the tap. (Singing):

      ‘Tap, tap, tappety tap,

      I’m

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