"You shall not go a yard out of your way on my account," she said. "I am not afraid of going about alone. The great ladies I know would swoon if they found themselves in a London street unattended; but I am not like them."
He gave her his arm, and they threaded their way through a labyrinth of streets and alleys that lay between the Thames and the waste spaces of Lambeth Marsh, a dreary region where the water lay in stagnant pools, receptacles for all unconsidered filth, exhaling putrid fever. Here and there above the forest of chimneys and chance medley of roofs and gables there rose the bulk of a pottery, for this was the chosen place of the potter's art; but for the rest the desolate region between Stangate and the New Cut was given over to poverty and crime. Fine old houses that had once stood in the midst of fair gardens had been divided into miserable tenements, and swarmed like anthills with half-starved humanity; alleys so narrow that the sunshine rarely visited them, covered and crowded the old garden ground; four-storied houses, built with a supreme neglect of such trifles as light and air, overshadowed the low hovels that had once been rustic cottages smiling across modest flower-gardens.
Mr. Stobart came to a halt in a lane leading to the river, where a row of rickety wooden houses hung over an expanse of malodorous mud. The tide was out, and a troop of half-naked children were chasing a starved dog, with a kettle tied to his tail, through the slime and slush of the foreshore.
"Oh, the poor dog!" cried Tonia, as they stood on a causeway at the end of the lane. "For pity's sake stop those little wretches!"
George called to them, but they only looked at him, and pursued their sport. Had he been alone he would have given the little demons chase, but he could not risk bespattering himself from head to foot in a lady's company.
"There is but one way to stop them," he said, "and that is to teach them better. We are trying to do that in our schools, but the task needs twenty-fold more men and more money than we can command. 'Twould shock you, no doubt, to see how the children of the poor amuse themselves; but I question if there is more cruelty to the brute creation among those unenlightened brats than among the children of our nobility, who are bred up to think a cock-fight or a stag-hunt the summit of earthly bliss. Jim Rednap," he shouted, as the chase doubled and came within earshot, "if you don't untie that kettle and let the dog go, I'll give you a flogging that will make you squall."