MARK AND THE COSTERMONGERS
ThatBeautifulFuneral
Two Girls Meeting at the Corner of a Street.
“Hullo, I didn’t know you had moved up this way again. Who are you in black for?”
“Stepfather. Thank Gowd! hewasa reg’lar log on the fambly’s leg. Kept a-ebbing and a-flowing andwouldn’tdie. But you know when we moved to ’Ampsted, that settled him. Those flu winds it was as took ’im off.
“We ’ad a postmortem and everything on ’im, and when they opened ’im you know they found he had two ulsters in his inside and there was ’aricot veins in his legs too. But it was the influential winds that took ’im off, real.
“Of course Mother ’ad ’im insured in all sorts of places. So, poor man, he real paid for all this beautiful mourning we are having on him. We all dress alike in this beautiful black.
“On the funeral day we had all our cousins up from up-country and we had such abeautifulfuneral and such a swell party atter. We had a hotch-bone of beef and blanmanges and jellies and cakes and tarts, and by Gowd! we did enjoy ourselves.
“Good-by, Maisie, see you another day, for my missus isn’t a disagreeable old cat like most of ’em. That’s why I ’ave this bit of talk with you. But I means to better myself soon as I can.”
Ada’s Beast of a Man
“Well, m’am, I feels all over alike. That beast of a ’usband of my pretty pet of a Ada he wouldn’t let her have a van to move in when she had all that sweep of furniture that he bought for her at the market for five pounds ($25) and her chest of drawsers besides. Real, I don’t feel as if I could eat a bit, I don’t.
“She had to get a barrow, Ada had, and a wheel came hoff and the pretty pet had to hold it up with the long broom while the man was a-pushing of it. But I will say, she has improved her rooms in moving.
“But it didn’t look at all like a man ofhisstanding, the governor of a coal cart. And you can imagine what the neighbors said, seeing the moving on the barrow and my pretty pet holding of it up.
“But Imustsay she got blinds, they are those Verinkers (Venetians) you ’eard of. Sure he is a beast, my pretty pet’s man. He wouldn’t even put up the indecent lights for her, and she had to pay a man tuppence to do it for her while she was still a-trembling from holding up the barrow and that after paying tuppence halfpenny for the indecent lights.”
Jealousy in Lowland
(Overheard near Billingsgate Market.)
“Hullo, how you gettin’ on and how’s your old man?”
“See ’ere, you remembers ’ow I looked atter ’im when he was that damn’ ill and all the nourishments I got ’im. Well ’e got that strong again but ’e wouldn’t go to work. So I says to ’im yesterday mornin’ w’en ’e was a-sittin’ over the fire smokin’ his dirty pipe, ‘Ain’t youeverto go work no more?’
“What d’you think ’e says?
“‘Ere,’ he says, ‘I ’ave bin a-thinkin’. Where did you get all dese ’ere nourishments from while I was sick? Idobelieve you had a boy. ’Ho is the man? I’ll knock ’is damn’ block off.’
“Now remember, maid, ’e never said a word while ’e was gettin’ the nourishment down ’is gut, the beast, but afterwards ’e says dis ’ere to me. ’Ere’s a beast for yer, girl.”
Lady No. 2—“’Ere ’e’s a-comin’ along the corner. Let’s scoot, maidie. ’E doesn’t look good-natured at all, at all, this mornin’.”
The Troubles of Liz
Liz, the maid-of-all-work, has overstayed her furlough, and is very emphatic, putting the blame on Kate.
“Oh, I won’t go out with that there Kate no more, m’am. That Kate do know a lot of fast chaps. She interdooced me to one and he kept a-cuddlin’ of me round the neck and near pushed my hat off, you see it’s all awry. And he kept a-pinching of me about and arsked if it was all my own figger. But he did sayDearto me.”
Liz’s next place was with a butcher’s, but there they “were real rude” to her, and she left, of course. This is her report of what happened:
“‘Here, Liz,’ said one of the helpers to me, ‘there’s two kidneys for my tea. Take a care, you got two like that.’ Oh, I can’t stay in a place where they talk as fast as that, just as if I had kidneys like a cow.
“And the other chap comes and brings me a bit of liver to cook forhistea, and he says: ‘Liz, you know you’ve got a liver just like that?’ I just ran upstairs and told the missus. And in the evening one brings me a pig’s head with a squint in his eye and he says, ‘Liz, this is what you do to the boys—give ’em the glad eye.’ No, I won’t stop, as true as there is Gowds in ’eaven.”
Her next place was with a benevolent old spinster. Liz left her service, saying: “I had no wages, and what do you think she did? Why, she has locked up the tarts. And the other day I was making myself a bit of toast and margarine and the old cat caught me at it and she said, ‘Isn’t dripping not good enough for you, Liz?’”