.. wet, when he answered with one of his
bubbling outbreaks:
"I don't wonder yer hot, sor, but I git that fidgety. I been so long
doin' nothin'; two months now, sor, since I been on a box."
I worked on for a minute without answering. Hanging wall-paper by
standing on a box was probably the way they did it in the country, the
ceilings being low.
"No work?" I said, aimlessly. As long as he kept still I didn't care
what he talked or laughed about.
"Plinty, sor--an' summer's the time to do it. So many strangers comin'
an' goin', but they won't let me at it. I'm laid off for a month yet;
that's why your job come in handy, sor."
"Row with your Union?" I remarked, listlessly, my mind still intent on
watching a sky tint above the foreground trees.
"No--wid the perlice. A little bit of a scrimmage wan night in Trafalgar
Square. It was me own fault, sor, for I oughter a-knowed better. It was
about three o'clock in the mornin', sor, and I was outside one o' them
clubs just below Piccadilly, when one o' them young chaps come out wid
three or four others, all b'ilin' drunk--one was Lord Bentig--jumps into
a four-wheeler standin' by the steps an' hollers out to the rest of us:
'A guinea to the man that gits to Trafalgar Square fust; three minutes'
start,' and off he wint and we after him, leavin' wan of the others
behind wid his watch in his hand.
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