'If you ain't got tins an' cookin' things, all as you can get'll be bread and cheese.No bloody good that! You must 'ave 'ot tea, an'
wegetables, an' a bit o' meat, now an' again, if you're goin' to do work as is work.Cawn't do it on cold wittles.Tell you wot you do, lad.Run around in the mornin' an' look in the dust pans.You'll find plenty o' tins to cook in.Fine tins, wonderful good some o'
them.Me an' the ole woman got ours that way.' (He pointed at the bundle she held, while she nodded proudly, beaming on me with good nature and consciousness of success and prosperity.) 'This overcoat is as good as a blanket,' he went on, advancing the skirt of it that Imight feel its thickness.'An' 'oo knows, I may find a blanket before long.
Again the old woman nodded and beamed, this time with the dead certainty that he would find a blanket before long.
'I call it a 'oliday, 'oppin',' he concluded rapturously.'A tidy way o' gettin' two or three pounds together an' fixin' up for winter.The only thing I don't like'- and here was the rift within the lute- 'is paddin' the 'oof down there.'
It was plain the years were telling on this energetic pair, and while they enjoyed the quick work with the fingers, 'paddin' the 'oof,' which is walking, was beginning to bear heavily upon them.
And I looked at their gray hairs, and ahead into the future ten years, and wondered how it would be with them.
I noticed another man and his old woman join the line, both of them past fifty.The woman, because she was a woman, was admitted into the spike; but he was too late, and, separated from his mate, was turned away to tramp the streets all night.