Page 190 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

a ‘og for the trousers, and two ‘ogs for the rest. That’s four
and a tanner.’
‘Take the ‘ole lot for five and a tanner, chum.’
‘Right y’are, off with ‘em. I got to get out to sell my late
edition.’
The clothed man stripped, and in three minutes their
positions were reversed; the naked man dressed, and the
other kilted with a sheet of the Daily Mail.
The dormitory was dark and close, with fifteen beds in it.
There was a horrible hot reek of urine, so beastly that at first
one tried to breathe in small, shallow puffs, not filling one’s
lungs to the bottom. As I lay down in bed a man loomed
out of the darkness, leant over me and began babbling in an
educated, half-drunken voice:
‘An old public schoolboy, what? [He had heard me say
something to Paddy.] Don’t meet many of the old school
here. I am an old Etonian. You know—twenty years hence
this weather and all that.’ He began to quaver out the Eton
boating-song, not untunefully:

Jolly boating weather,

And a hay harvest—
‘Stop that—noise!’ shouted several lodgers.
‘Low types,’ said the old Etonian, ‘very low types. Funny
sort of place for you and me, eh? Do you know what my
friends say to me? They say, ‘M—, you are past redemption.’
Quite true, I AM past redemption. I’ve come down in the

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