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Updated: June 24, 2025
There was a brief pause; suddenly a man staggered out of the gin-shop, smearing the back of his hand across his mouth as he came a massively built, ill-favoured brute, with a shock of uncombed red hair and small ferret-like eyes. He stared stupidly at the weeping Liz, then at Mother Mawks, finally from one to the other of the loafers who stood by. "Wot's the row?" he demanded, quickly. "Wot's up?
She had been very regular in her payments to Mother Mawks, and that irate lady, kept in order by her bull-dog of a husband, had been of late very contented to let her have the child without further interference. Liz knew well enough that no one in the miserable alley where she dwelt would care whether the baby were ill or not. They would tell her, "The more sickly the better for your trade."
"T' god o' flies taks out his book an' begins to read t' list: 'Five hunderd mawks, three hunderd atter-cops, two hunderd an' fifty bummle-bees. 'Bummle-bees! Bummle-bees! says Satan. 'What's t' gooid o' them, I'd like to know? How mony house-flies, how mony blue-bottles hasta sent? and wi' that he rives t' book out o' Beelzebub's hands and turns ower t' pages hissen.
Holding the child closely to her breast, she looked cautiously out of her narrow window, and perceived that the connubial fight was over. From the shouts of laughter and plaudits that reached her ears, Joe Mawks had evidently won the day; his wife had disappeared from the field.
Her silence exasperated a tangle-haired, cat-faced girl of seventeen years, who, more than half drunk, sat on the ground, clasping her knees with both arms and rocking herself lazily to and fro. "Mother Mawks!" cried she, "Mother Mawks! You're wanted! Here's Liz come back with your babby!"
This fly is very like our British bluebottle, with a somewhat greener head, and a body entirely yellow. Before the joint had been ten minutes upon the table, small white mawks were moving upon the surface of the meat in considerable numbers.
If you asked him when the war would be won he pleaded ignorance; but if you asked him where it would be won, his answer invariably was: "On t' tatie-patches at Horsforth." He still nursed his grievances, for pet grievances are not yet included in the tax on luxuries, but these were no longer suffragettes and lawyers, but slugs, "mawks," and "mowdiewarps."
'Ave it out fair! Joe Mawks 'll stand by and see fair game. Fire away, my hearties! fire, fire away!" And, with a chuckling idiot laugh, he dived into the pocket of his torn corduroy trousers and produced a pipe.
He was more like an animal than a human creature, with his straggling gray hair, bushy beard, and sharp teeth protruding like fangs from beneath his upper lip. His profession was that of an area thief, and he considered it a sufficiently respectable calling. "Mother Mawks has got it this time," he said, with a grin which was more like a snarl.
Another shout of approving merriment burst from the drink-sodden spectators of the little scene, and the girl crouched on the ground removed her encircling hands from her knees to clap them loudly, as she exclaimed: "Well done, Mother Mawks! One doesn't let out kids at night for nothing! 'T ought to be more expensive than daytime!" The face of Liz had grown white and rigid.
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