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Her luxurious white hair streamed out during her gyrations, and with her grotesque appearance and the faint light of the candle, she presented a gruesome spectacle. Calton remembered the tales he had heard of the women of Paris, at the revolution, and the way they danced "La Carmagnole." Mother Guttersnipe would have been in her element in that sea of blood and turbulence he thought.
"Fool, or not," said Gus, becoming more angry every moment as he thought of his wrongs, "I'm not an underbred loafer who cleans a fellow out of his cash and then rounds on him because he can't pay his way. Why, a Whitechapel guttersnipe " "Can't appreciate the allusion," said Jim; "I've never been to Whitechapel. But anyhow, Todd, there's the door. I think you had really better go."
What would the ladder of education have led to, except a platform on which a posturing professor proved that a cousin german was the same as a German cousin? What would the guttersnipe have learnt as a graduate, except to embrace a Saxon because he was the other half of an Anglo-Saxon? The day came, and the ignorant fellow found he had other things to learn.
After Noblet's it was the Saxon Shoe Company and Dunn's hat-shop's turn to be looted, and one could see little guttersnipe wearing high silk hats and new bowlers and straws, who had never worn headgear before: bare-footed little devils with legs buried in Wellington top-boots, unable to bend their knees, and drunken women brandishing satin shoes and Russian boots till it seemed as if the whole revolution would collapse in ridicule or pandemonium.
"Shut up, cuss you!" yelled Mother Guttersnipe, viciously, "or I'll knock yer bloomin' 'ead orf," and she seized the square bottle as if to carry out her threat; but, altering her mind, she poured some of its contents into the cup, and drank it off with avidity. "The woman seems ill," said Calton, casting a shuddering glance at the stretcher. "So she are," growled Mother Guttersnipe, angrily.
But he merely shrugged his shoulders, and walked out of the room, as with a final curse, delivered in a hoarse voice, Mother Guttersnipe sank exhausted on the floor, and yelled for gin. Next morning the Court was crowded, and numbers were unable to gain admission.
Mother Guttersnipe burst into a volley of oaths, and having run rapidly through all she knew, subsided into a sulky silence. "She wrote on it," went on Sal, "an' then arsked me to take it to the Melbourne Club an' give it to 'im.
'e wants 'is throat cut," said Mother Guttersnipe, viciously. "An' s'elp me I'll do for 'im some night w'en 'e's a watchin' round 'ere as if it were Pentridge 'e can git what he can out of that whelp as ran away, but I knows suthin' 'e don't know, cuss 'im."
"A terrible mistake, sir! I have been kidnapped on board this vessel! I am not a sailor, I do not know how I come to be here I have been kidnapped, sir!" "How terrible!" said Swope. "I do not doubt your word at all, my man. Anyone can see you are no sailor, but a guttersnipe. And possibly you were er 'kidnapped, as you call it, in company with the wharf-rats behind you."
She was evidently growing very weak, so Calton turned to Kilsip and told him in a whisper to get a doctor. The detective scribbled a note on some paper, and, giving it to Lizer, ordered her to take it. At this, the other girl arose, and, putting her arm in that of the child's, they left together. "Them two young 'usseys gone?" said Mother Guttersnipe.
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