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A fireman on a ladder was pouring water on to theroof.
My life was despaired of
and Isuffered frightfully.
A window burst outwards andthe glass tinkled across
the road. Peer into the murky mystery of your orange phosphate.
Am I to sit
here and watch a man drink himself to death! There werea dozen hands to help
him rise. Did you square the fireman to squirt my roof! It is my unpleasant
duty to inform you that theparty must terminate at once.
Give one of them
sheets to the fair aired sheila, he cried.
Did you square the fireman to squirt
my roof!
But it was not that they minded, the children said.
The wet
streetglistened and the gutters gurgled with a burden of water. I found myself
a couple of bottles of whisky and sat down. A moment of happy grins, of surging
happy memories, of hand-shakestruly meant.
The crowd on the kerb cleared a
little space for me and I sat down.
Roofs a certainty, said Woggo gloatingly. I
say nothing against a man drinking, but to drink likethat . The upper floor had
burnt through and fallen, and the balcony was acentre of flame.
Another loser
strolled in, barefooted and holding his trousers up, andbrought his banjo with
him. As it was, I justcupped my chin in my hands and thought.
I remember I
locked the front door and put the key under the mat. A window burst outwards
andthe glass tinkled across the road. They wont let me have the gramophone, he
growled sullenly. There was a strip-pokerparty in the dining-room and a
drinking party in the bedroom adjoining. If Smacker was playing poker in
Klondike edave been shot as soon as e shuffled. And what is it but a weak
sopper of milk, a lemonade lapper,a cocoa gargler?
Just when I realized
mynecessity, she came back. And what is it but a weak sopper of milk, a
lemonade lapper,a cocoa gargler? He was such amiserable specimen, the children
said, all humps and hollows.
Itscoming to something when a mart cant look at
his own fire that hestarted himself. Im not worrying about that, I said,
putting the bottle to my mouth.
I demanded, as Stanley eyedmy vest with a silly
grin on his face.
She said, the other day,something about waves mountains high.
I offered this poor, water-logged waif the brandy.
They are akin to the
horsethat drinks water and the calf that guzzles milk.
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