The Workingmans Paradise | Page 4

ready to leave and just what I said to him,
the dirty wretch, I'll tell to you, Mrs. Phillips, some time when
she"--nodding at Nellie--"isn't about. She's getting so like a blessed
saint that one feels as if one's in church when she's about, bless her
heart!"
"You're getting very particular all at once, Mrs. Macanany," observed
Nellie.
"It's a wonder he didn't send for a policeman," commented Mrs.
Phillips.
"Send for a policeman! And pretty he'd look with the holy bible in his
hand repeating what I said to him, wouldn't he now?" enquired Mrs.
Macanany, once more placing her great arms on her hips and glaring
with her watery eyes at her audience.
"Did you hear that Mrs. Hobbs had a son this morning?" questioned
Mrs. Phillips, suddenly recollecting that she also might have an item of
news.
"What! Mrs. Hobbs, so soon! How would I be hearing when I just came
through the back, and Tom only just gone out to wear his feet off,
looking for work? A boy again! The Lord preserve us all! It's the devil's
own luck the dear creature has, isn't it now? Why didn't you tell me
before, and me here gossiping when the dear woman will be expecting
me round to see her and the dear baby and wondering what I've got

against her for not coming? I must be off, now, and tidy myself a bit
and go and cheer the poor creature up for I know very well how one
wants cheering at such times. Was it a hard time she had with it? And
who is it like the little angel that came straight from heaven this blessed
day? The dear woman! I must be off, so I'll say good-day to you, Mrs.
Phillips, and may the sun shine on you and your sweetheart, Nellie,
even if he does take you away from us all, and may you have a
houseful of babies with faces as sweet as your own and never miss a
neighbour to cheer you a bit when the trouble's on you. The Lord be
with us all!"
Nellie laughed as the rough-voiced, kind-hearted woman took herself
off, to cross the broken dividing wall to the row of houses that backed
closely on the open kitchen door. Then she shrugged her shoulders.
"It's always the way," she remarked, as she turned away to the other
door that led along a little, narrow passage to the street. "What's going
to become of the innocent little baby? Nobody thinks of that."
Mrs. Phillips did not answer. She was tidying up in a wearied way.
Besides, she was used to Nellie, and had a dim perception that what
that young woman said was right, only one had to work, especially on
Saturdays when the smallest children could be safely turned into the
street to play with the elder ones, the baby nursed by pressed nurses,
who by dint of scolding and coaxing and smacking and promising were
persuaded to keep it out of the house, even though they did not keep it
altogether quiet. Mrs. Phillips "tidied up" in a wearied way, without
energy, working stolidly all the time as if she were on a tread-mill. She
had a weary look, the expression of one who is tired always, who gets
up tired and goes to bed tired, and who never by any accident gets a
good rest, who even when dead is not permitted to lie quietly like other
people but gets buried the same day in a cheap coffin that hardly keeps
the earth up and is doomed to he soon dug up to make room for some
other tired body in that economical way instituted by the noble
philanthropists who unite a keen appreciation of the sacredness of
burial with a still keener appreciation of the value of grave-lots. She
might have been a pretty girl once or she might not. Nobody would

ever have thought of physical attractiveness as having anything to do
with her. Mrs. Macanany was distinctly ugly. Mrs. Phillips was neither
ugly nor pretty nor anything else. She was a poor thin draggled woman,
who tried to be clean but who had long ago given up in despair any
attempt at looking natty and had now no ambition for herself but to
have something "decent" to go out in. Once it was her ambition also to
have a "I room." She had scraped and saved and pared in dull times for
this "room" and when once Joe had a long run of steady work she had
launched out into what those who know how workingmen's wives
should live would have denounced as the wildest extravagance. A gilt
framed mirror and a sofa, four spidery chairs and a round table, a
wonderful display