Part 16

(JAWBONES enters. JAWBONES—otherwise WILLIAM GORDON—is a clean-shaven young hooligan. He wears a bicycle cap on the back of his head, allowing a picturesque tuft of hair to fall over his forehead. Evidently he is suffering from controlled indignation.)

SIGSBY. (Seeing him.) Oh, so you’ve come back, have you?

JAWBONES. I ’ave, wot’s left of me.

SIGSBY. What have you been doing?

JAWBONES. Clinging to a roof for the last three hours.

SIGSBY. Clinging to a roof! What for?

JAWBONES. (He boils over.) Wot for? ’Cos I didn’t want to fall off! Wot do you think: ’cos I was fond of it?

SIGSBY. I don’t understand—

JAWBONES. You find yourself ’alf way up a ladder, posting bills as the other side ’as took objection to—with a crowd of girls from Pink’s jam factory waiting for you at the bottom with a barrel of treacle, and you will understand. Nothing else for me to do, o’ course, but to go up. Then they took the ladder away.

SIGSBY. Where are the bills?

JAWBONES. Last I see of them was their being put into a ’earse on its way to Ilford Cemetery.

SIGSBY. This has got to be seen into. This sort of thing can’t be allowed to go on. (He snatches up his hat.)

JAWBONES. There’s another suggestion I’d like to make.

SIGSBY. (Pauses.)

JAWBONES. That is, if this election is going to be fought fairly, that our side should be provided with ’at-pins.

SIGSBY. (Grunts.) Tell Mrs. Chinn to keep that chop warm.

(He goes out.)

GINGER. (She begins to giggle. It grows into a shrill hee-haw.)

JAWBONES. (He looks at her fixedly.)

GINGER. (Her laugh, under the stern eye of JAWBONES, dies away.)

JAWBONES. Ain’t no crowd of you ’ere, you know. Nothing but my inborn chivalry to prevent my pulling your nose.

GINGER. (Cowed, but simmering.) Chivalry! (A shrill snort.)

JAWBONES. Yus. And don’t you put a strain upon it neither. Because I tell you straight, it’s weakening.

GINGER. (His sudden fierceness has completely cowed her.)

JAWBONES. You wimmin—

(There re-enters MRS. CHINN with a tray. He is between them.)

That’s old Sigsby’s chop?

MRS. CHINN. Yes. He hasn’t gone out again, has he?