A CHILD OF THE JAGO
never do for mother and the children to be left helpless. How good for them all to go off easily together, and wake in some pleasant place, say a place like Father Sturt's sitting room, and perhaps find—but there, what foolishness!
What was this unendurable stupor that clung about him like a net? He knew everything clearly enough, but it was all in an atmosphere of dull heedlessness. There would be some relief in doing something violent—in smashing something to little pieces with a hammer.
He came to the ruined houses. There was a tumult of yells, and a crowd of thirty or forty lads went streaming across the open waste, waving sticks.
"Come on! come on, Jago! 'Ere they are!"
A fight! Ah, what more welcome! And Dove Lane, too—Dove Lane that had taken to bawling the taunt, "Jago cut-throats," since . . .
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