Granting, for the sake of the argument, that we were what we represented ourselves to be—­namely, poor men and broke—­then here was out position:  night was coming on; we had had no supper, much less dinner; and we possessed sixpence between us.  I was hungry enough to eat three sixpenn’orths of food, and so was Bert.  One thing was patent.  By doing 16.3 per cent. justice to our stomachs, we would expend the sixpence, and our stomachs would still be gnawing under 83.3 per cent. injustice.  Being broke again, we could sleep under a hedge, which was not so bad, though the cold would sap an undue portion of what we had eaten.  But the morrow was Sunday, on which we could do no work, though our silly stomachs would not knock off on that account.  Here, then, was the problem:  how to get three meals on Sunday, and two on Monday (for we could not make another “sub” till Monday evening).

We knew that the casual wards were overcrowded; also, that if we begged from farmer or villager, there was a large likelihood of our going to jail for fourteen days.  What was to be done?  We looked at each other in despair—­

—­Not a bit of it.  We joyfully thanked God that we were not as other men, especially hoppers, and went down the road to Maidstone, jingling in our pockets the half-crowns and florins we had brought from London.

CHAPTER XV—­THE SEA WIFE

You might not expect to find the Sea Wife in the heart of Kent, but that is where I found her, in a mean street, in the poor quarter of Maidstone.  In her window she had no sign of lodgings to let, and persuasion was necessary before she could bring herself to let me sleep in her front room.  In the evening I descended to the semi-subterranean kitchen, and talked with her and her old man, Thomas Mugridge by name.

And as I talked to them, all the subtleties and complexities of this tremendous machine civilisation vanished away.  It seemed that I went down through the skin and the flesh to the naked soul of it, and in Thomas Mugridge and his old woman gripped hold of the essence of this remarkable English breed.  I found there the spirit of the wanderlust which has lured Albion’s sons across the zones; and I found there the colossal unreckoning which has tricked the English into foolish squabblings and preposterous fights, and the doggedness and stubbornness which have brought them blindly through to empire and greatness; and likewise I found that vast, incomprehensible patience which has enabled the home population to endure under the burden of it all, to toil without complaint through the weary years, and docilely to yield the best of its sons to fight and colonise to the ends of the earth.