see fer themselves instead of readin' about it in a book. I can't read
myself, bein' no scholar, but I can see that books an' plays is fer them
as ain't got no eyes in their 'eads."

The street, which Mrs Yabsley loved, was a street of poor folk--people to
whom poverty clung like their shirt. It tumbled over the ridge opposite
the church, fell rapidly for a hundred yards, and then, recovering its
balance, sauntered easily down the slope till it met Botany Road on level
ground. It was a street of small houses and large families, and struck
the eye as mean and dingy, for most of the houses were standing on their
last legs, and paint was scarce. The children used to kick and scrape
it off the fences, and their parents rub it off the walls by leaning
against them in a tired way for hours at a stretch. On hot summer nights
the houses emptied their inhabitants on to the verandas and footpaths.
The children, swarming like rabbits, played in the middle of the road.
With clasped hands they formed a ring, and circled joyously to a song
of childland, the immemorial rhymes handed down from one generation
to another as savages preserve tribal rites. The fresh, shrill voices
broke on the air, mingled with silvery peals of laughter.


What will you give to know her name,
Know her name, know her name?
What will you give to know her name,
On a cold and frosty morning?


Across the street comes a burst of coarse laughter, and a string of foul,
obscene words on the heels of a jest. And again the childish trebles
would ring on the tainted air: