"Parties like him think no more of taking the bread out of the mouths
of the struggling poor than if they was insecks!"
Her husband seemed to think the remark slightly uncalled for.
"That's you, Eliza, all over. You must put your spoke in everybody's
wheel. You can't keep quiet, can you?"
"It's as well some of us are like that. Some of us would keep quiet
till we was dead. I'm not that sort, I thank goodness."
A gentleman on the seat on the other side of the driver, leaning
towards me, proffered a suggestion--his accent was distinctly nasal.
"If I vas your vriend I vould gif him a gopper or two to keep him
quiet."
At last Stacey-Lumpton found his voice.
"Take that horrible thing away, man."
"'Orrible thing! Wot are you calling a 'orrible thing? Everythink's a
'orrible thing accordink to you. Don't you come trying no toffs over
me, my funny bloke, or you'll soon know."
Thereupon something happened which I had not expected, and which, I am
pretty sure, Jimmy had not expected either. Stacey-Lumpton took that
box of bloaters in his kid-gloved hands, and in another moment it was
lying in the road. He had thrown it overboard. What immediately ensued
may be described as larks. I had not anticipated anything of that kind
when I had suggested that we should ride outside. Jimmy "went for"
Stacey-Lumpton with a full-mouthed imprecation.
"He's took my bloaters ... his eyes!!!"
The driver pulled up. "Now then! now then! what's all this? Might I
just inquire? Some of you'll get hurt, you know."
Stacey-Lumpton rose from his seat. He turned. He lifted Jimmy off his
feet. Jimmy was one of those half-grown coster lads who in London may
be regarded as common objects of the sea-shore. His opponent was twice
his size and he was an athlete, although he was a "toff." Lowering
Jimmy, in spite of his frantic struggles, over the side of the
omnibus, he dropped him on to the street. 'Enery, who also evinced
symptoms of violence, went by the same route after his friend.
Stacey-Lumpton tossed a sovereign after them.
"Provide yourselves with another box of bloaters and a new hat out of
that, my men."
But Jimmy was not to be appeased. His honour had been wounded in its
most tender place. Tossing his injured billycock into the mud, he
began to tear his coat off his back.
"Come down! Meet me like a man!"
The driver played the part of peacemaker.
"Don't be silly, my lad! The gentleman could swallow you! Pick up your
sovereign. You'll never see as much money in your life again." He
started his horses. "Good-bye, my little dears. If I was you I'd have
a bloater each for tea."
When, having arrived at the end of his first 'bus drive,
Stacey-Lumpton found himself on solid ground again, he delivered
himself of a sententious observation:
"I fancy that some of the passengers on that omnibus were beneath the
rank of a baronet."