Inverted World Pale as royals, the pair of them. Wouldn’t know a day’s work if it shone on them blazing. Put their backs into naught, far as I can see, except giving me gob. Only this morning Spiv says to me, she says, “Don’t mind me, ma’am,” when I find her dangling her feet while she ought be cleaning the slops. “Don’t mind me, I’m only resting up on account of my courses.” Then, when I catch her putting the woolens through the mangle: “But, Mrs. Burns, this is how I did them in the last place, this is how the missuses are doing them.” You come to London, get a nice home about you and—blight your innocence!—you think you’re over with the toils and the trouble. The other one can hear me chiding from two flights up, and comes down in her night rail. “Don’t stand there, Pumps,” I says to her. And then, “For the love of Christ, Pumps, don’t stand there gawping,” for she’ll not hearken to something spoken only the once.
