The woman chuckled, and then suddenly seized with suspicion looked at her visitor sharply.
“What do you want me to blow the gaff for?” she said; “you’re a leery old hand, you are, for all your simple ways, and you’ve got some game on, I’ll take my davy.”
“I a game—I——!” answered George, an expression of the deepest pain spreading itself over his ugly features. “No, marm—and when one hev wanted to help a friend too. Well, if you think that—and no doubt misfortune hev made you doubtful-like—the best I can do is to bid you good-day, and to wish you well out of your troubles, workhus and all, marm, which I do according,” and he rose from his box with much dignity, politely bowed to the hag on the mattress, and then turning walked towards the door.
“I’ll go,” she said. “I’ll take the change out of him; I’ll teach him to let his lawful wife starve on a beggarly pittance. I don’t care if he does try to kill me. I’ll ruin him,” and she stamped upon the floor and screamed, “I’ll ruin him, I’ll ruin him!” presenting such a picture of abandoned rage and wickedness that even George, whose feelings were not finely strung, inwardly shrank from her.
“Ah, marm,” he said, “no wonder you’re put about. When I think of what you’ve had to suffer, I own it makes my blood go a-biling through my veins. But if you is a-coming, mayhap it would be as well to stop cursing of and put your hat on, and we hev got to catch the train.” And he pointed to a head-gear chiefly made of somewhat dilapidated peacock feathers, and an ulster which the bailiffs had either overlooked or left through pity.
She put on the hat and cloak. Then going to the hole beneath the board, out of which she said the woman Ellen had stolen her jewellery, she extracted the copy of the certificate of marriage which that lady had not apparently thought worth taking, and placed it in the pocket of her pink silk _peignoir_.
Then George having first secured the remainder of the bottle of brandy, which he slipped into his capacious pocket, they started, and drove to Liverpool Street. Such a spectacle as the Tiger upon the platform George was wont in after days to declare he never did see. But it can easily be imagined that a fierce, dissolute, hungry-looking woman, with half-dyed hair, who had drunk as much as was good for her, dressed in a hat made of shabby peacock feathers, dirty white shoes, an ulster with some buttons off, and a gorgeous but filthy pink silk tea-gown, presented a sufficiently curious appearance. Nor did it lose strength by contrast with that of her companion, the sober and melancholy-looking George, who was arrayed in his pepper-and-salt Sunday suit.