"
"All right, sir. I'll tell her." Westmacott raised his hat and strode
away to the westward, while the Admiral, after a hurried lunch, bent his
steps towards the east.
It was a long walk, but the old seaman swung along at a rousing pace,
leaving street after street behind him. The great business places
dwindled down into commonplace shops and dwellings, which decreased and
became more stunted, even as the folk who filled them did, until he was
deep in the evil places of the eastern end. It was a land of huge, dark
houses and of garish gin-shops, a land, too, where life moves
irregularly and where adventures are to be gained--as the Admiral was to
learn to his cost.
He was hurrying down one of the long, narrow, stone-flagged lanes
between the double lines of crouching, disheveled women and of dirty
children who sat on the hollowed steps of the houses, and basked in the
autumn sun. At one side was a barrowman with a load of walnuts, and
beside the barrow a bedraggled woman with a black fringe and a chequered
shawl thrown over her head. She was cracking walnuts and picking them
out of the shells, throwing out a remark occasionally to a rough man in
a rabbit-skin cap, with straps under the knees of his corduroy trousers,
who stood puffing a black clay pipe with his back against the wall.
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