[sixpence].
A roar of applause greeted the time-honored yarn, and from somewhere over in the deeper darkness came another voice, orating angrily:-'Talk o' the country bein' good for tommy [food].I'd like to see it.I jest came up from Dover, an' blessed little tommy I got.They won't gi' ye a drink o' water, they won't, much less tommy.'
'There's mugs never go out of Kent,' spoke a second voice, 'an' they live bloomin' fat all along.'
'I come through Kent,' went on the first voice, still more angrily, 'an' Gawd blimey if I see any tommy.An' I always notices as the blokes as talks about 'ow much they can get, w'en they're in the spike can eat my share o' skilly as well as their bleedin' own.'
'There's chaps in London,' said a man across the table from me, 'that get all the tommy they want, an' they never think o' goin' to the country.Stay in London the year 'round.Nor do they think of lookin' for a kip [place to sleep), till nine or ten o'clock at night.'
A general chorus verified this statement.
'But they're bloody clever, them chaps,' said an admiring voice.
'Course they are,' said another voice.'But it's not the likes of me an' you can do it.You got to be born to it, I say.Them chaps 'ave ben openin' cabs an' sellin' papers since the day they was born, an'
their fathers an' mothers before 'em.It's all in the trainin', I say, an' the likes of me an' you 'ud starve at it.'
This also was verified by the general chorus, and likewise the statement that there were 'mugs as lives the twelvemonth 'round in the spike an' never get a blessed bit o' tommy other than spike skilly an'
bread.'
'I once got arf a crown in the Stratford spike,' said a new voice.