Voices begin to go up the scale, something like this:-
"Yes?"
"Yes!"
"Yes?"
"Yes!"
"Yes?"
"Yes!"
"Yes?"
"Yes!"
Sufficient affirmation on both sides, conflict again precipitated. One
combatant gets overwhelming advantage, and follows it up from the way the
other combatant screams bloody murder. Bloody murder gurgles and dies
out, undoubtedly throttled by a strangle hold.
Entrance of new voices; a flank attack; strangle hold suddenly broken
from the way bloody murder goes up half an octave higher than before;
general hullaballoo, everybody fighting.
Lull; new voice, young girl's, "I'm goin' ter tyke my mother's part;"
dialogue, repeated about five times, "I'll do as I like, blankety, blank,
blank!" "I'd like ter see yer, blankety, blank, blank!" renewed
conflict, mothers, daughters, everybody, during which my landlady calls
her young daughter in from the back steps, while I wonder what will be
the effect of all that she has heard upon her moral fibre.
CHAPTER VI--FRYING-PAN ALLEY AND A GLIMPSE OF INFERNO
Three of us walked down Mile End Road, and one was a hero. He was a
slender lad of nineteen, so slight and frail, in fact, that, like Fra
Lippo Lippi, a puff of wind might double him up and turn him over.
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