It resembled tea less than lager beer resembles champagne.Nay, it was 'water-bewitched,' and did not resemble tea at all.
It was curious, after the first shock, to notice the effect the food had on them.At first they were melancholy, and talked of the divers times they had contemplated suicide.The Carter, not a week before, had stood on the bridge and looked at the water, and pondered the question.Water, the Carpenter insisted with heat, was a bad route.
He, for one, he knew, would struggle.A bullet was ''andier,' but how under the sun was he to get hold of a revolver? That was the rub.
They grew more cheerful as the hot 'tea' soaked in, and talked more about themselves.The Carter had buried his wife and children, with the exception of one son, who grew to manhood and helped him in his little business.Then the thing happened.The son, a man of thirty-one, died of the smallpox.No sooner was this over than the father came down with fever and went to the hospital for three months.
Then he was done for.He came out weak, debilitated, no strong young son to stand by him, his little business gone glimmering, and not a farthing.The thing had happened, and the game was up.No chance for an old man to start again.Friends all poor and unable to help.He had tried for work when they were putting up the stands for the first Coronation parade.'An' I got fair sick of the answer; "No! no! no!"It rang in my ears at night when I tried to sleep, always the same, "No! no! no!"' Only the past week he had answered an advertisement in Hackney, and on giving his age was told, 'Oh, too old, too old by far.'