'What do you expect to do in the end?' I asked them.'You know you're growing older every day.'
'Work'ouse,' said he.
'Gawd blimey if I do,' said she.'There's no 'ope for me, I know, but I'll die on the streets.No work'ouse for me, thank you.'
'No, indeed,' she sniffed in the silence that fell.
'After you have been out all night in the streets,' I asked, 'what do you do in the morning for something to eat?'
'Try to get a penny, if you 'aven't one saved over,' the man explained.'Then go to a coffee-'ouse an' get a mug o' tea.'
'But I don't see how that is to feed you,' I objected.
The pair smiled knowingly.
'You drink your tea in little sips,' he went on, 'making it last its longest.An' you look sharp, an' there's some as leaves a bit be'ind 'em.'
'It's s'prisin', the food wot some people leaves,' the woman broke in.
'The thing,' said the man judicially, as the trick dawned upon me, 'is to get 'old o' the penny.'
As we started to leave, Miss Haythorne gathered up a couple of crusts from the neighboring tables and thrust them somewhere into her rags.
'Cawn't wyste 'em, you know,' said she, to which the docker nodded, tucking away a couple of crusts himself.
At three in the morning I strolled up the Embankment.It was a gala night for the homeless, for the police were elsewhere; and each bench was jammed with sleeping occupants.There were as many women as men, and the great majority of them, male and female, were old.
Occasionally a boy was to be seen.On one bench I noticed a family, a man sitting upright with a sleeping babe in his arms, his wife asleep, her head on his shoulder, and in her lap the head of a sleeping youngster.The man's eyes were wide open.He was staring out over the water and thinking, which is not a good thing for a shelterless man with a family to do.It would not be a pleasant thing to speculate upon his thoughts; but this I know, and all London knows, that the cases of out-of-works killing their wives and babies is not an uncommon happening.