said as 'ow 'e couldn't get a bit o' sleep because of it—damned rot I call it. 'Owever it isn't out of doors you ought to be sittin', chucky. Feelin' bad?”
Peter looked at her out of his half-closed eyes.
“I can't bother any more,” he said to her sleepily. “They're so cruel—they won't let me go to sleep. I've got a pain here—in my chest you know. Have you got a pain in your chest?”
“My leg's sore,” she answered, “where a chap kicked me last week—just because—oh well,” she paused modestly and spat again—“It's comin' on cold.”
A cold little wind was coming up the river, ruffling the tips of the trees and turning the leaves of the plane-trees back as though it wanted to clean the other sides of them.
Peter got up unsteadily. “I'm going home to sleep,” he said, “I'm dreadfully tired. Good-night.”
“So long, chucky,” the lady with the damaged feather said to him. He left her eyeing discontentedly the hole in her boot and trying to fasten, with confused fingers, the buttons of the red blouse.
Peter mechanically, as one walking in a dream, crept into an omnibus. Mechanically he left it and mechanically climbed the stairs of the house in Bucket Lane. There were two fixed thoughts in his brain—one was that no one in the world had ever before been as thirsty as he was, and that he would willingly commit murder or any violence if thereby he might obtain drink, and the other thought was that Stephen was his enemy, that he hated Stephen because Stephen never left him alone and would not let him sleep—also in the back of his mind distantly, as though it concerned some one else, that he was very unhappy. . . .
Stephen was sitting on one of the beds, looking in front of him. Peter moved forward heavily and sat on the other bed. They looked at one another.
“No luck,” said Stephen, “Armstrong's hadn't room for a man. Ricroft wouldn't see me. Peter, I'm thinking we'll have to take to the roads—”
Peter made no answer.
“Yer not lookin' a bit well, lad. I doubt if yer can stand much more of it.”
Peter looked across at him sullenly.
