Cuckoo was really
cursing Mrs. Brigg because the world is full of close boroughs, not at
all because cold mutton has not learnt how to achieve eternal life, while
at the same time fulfilling its duties as an edible. Not understanding
this subtlety of emotion, Mrs. Brigg let herself loose in sarcasm.
"Why don't yer go out of a night?" she screamed, battering with one hand
on a tea-tray, held perpendicularly, to emphasize her words. "What's come
to yer? Go out; go out of a night."
"Shan't."
"Turned pious, 'ave yer?" sneered the landlady. "Or waitin' for a
'usband? Which is it to be? Mr. H'Addison, I dessey! Hee, hee, hee."
She burst into a bitter snigger. Cuckoo flushed scarlet and uttered words
of the pavement. Any one hearing her then must have put her down as
utterly unredeemed and irredeemable, a harridan to bandy foul language
with a cabman, or to outvie a street-urchin bumped against by a rival in
the newspaper trade. She covered Mrs. Brigg with abuse, prompted by the
gnawings at her heart, the hunger of mind and body, fear of the future,
wonder at the impossibilities of life. Her own greatness--for her love
and following obstinate unselfishness, without religious prompting or
self-respect, as it was, might be called great--turned sour within her
heart at such a moment.
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