Page 168 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

other tramps were waiting. A few of them were dirty old
habitual vagabonds, the majority decent-looking lads from
the north, probably miners or cotton operatives out of work.
Presently the door opened and a lady in a blue silk dress,
wearing gold spectacles and a crucifix, welcomed us in. In-
side were thirty or forty hard chairs, a harmonium, and a
very gory lithograph of the Crucifixion.
Uncomfortably we took off our caps and sat down. The
lady handed out the tea, and while we ate and drank she
moved to and fro, talking benignly. She talked upon reli-
gious subjects—about Jesus Christ always having a soft spot
for poor rough men like us, and about how quickly the time
passed when you were in church, and what a difference it
made to a man on the road if he said his prayers regularly.
We hated it. We sat against the wall fingering our caps (a
tramp feels indecently exposed with his cap off), and turn-
ing pink and trying to mumble something when the lady
addressed us. There was no doubt that she meant it all kind-
ly. As she came up to one of the north country lads with the
plate of buns, she said to him:
‘And you, my boy, how long is it since you knelt down
and spoke with your Father in Heaven?’
Poor lad, not a word could he utter; but his belly answered
for him, with a disgraceful rumbling which it set up at sight
of the food. Thereafter he was so overcome with shame that
he could scarcely swallow his bun. Only one man managed
to answer the lady in her own style, and he was a spry, red-
nosed fellow looking like a corporal who had lost his stripe
for drunkenness. He could pronounce the words ‘the dear

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