The gentleman [to the girl] Come, come! he can’t touch you:  you have a right to live where you please.

A sarcastic bystander [thrusting himself between the note taker and the gentleman] Park Lane, for instance.  I’d like to go into the Housing Question with you, I would.

The flower girl [subsiding into a brooding melancholy over her basket, and talking very low-spiritedly to herself] I’m a good girl, I am.

The sarcastic bystander [not attending to her] Do you know where I come from?

The note taker [promptly] Hoxton.

Titterings.  Popular interest in the note taker’s
performance increases.

The sarcastic one [amazed] Well, who said I didn’t?  Bly me!  You know everything, you do.

The flower girl [still nursing her sense of injury] Ain’t no call to meddle with me, he ain’t.

The bystander [to her] Of course he ain’t.  Don’t you stand it from him. [To the note taker] See here:  what call have you to know about people what never offered to meddle with you?  Where’s your warrant?

Several bystanders [encouraged by this seeming point of law] Yes:  where’s your warrant?

The flower girl.  Let him say what he likes.  I don’t want to have no truck with him.

The bystander.  You take us for dirt under your feet, don’t you?  Catch you taking liberties with a gentleman!

The sarcastic bystander.  Yes:  tell him where he come from if you want to go fortune-telling.

The note taker.  Cheltenham, Harrow, Cambridge, and India.

The gentleman.  Quite right. [Great laughter.  Reaction in the note taker’s favor.  Exclamations of He knows all about it.  Told him proper.  Hear him tell the toff where he come from? etc.].  May I ask, sir, do you do this for your living at a music hall?

The note taker.  I’ve thought of that.  Perhaps I shall some day.

The rain has stopped; and the persons on the outside of the crowd begin to drop off.

The flower girl [resenting the reaction] He’s no gentleman, he ain’t, to interfere with a poor girl.

The daughter [out of patience, pushing her way rudely to the front and displacing the gentleman, who politely retires to the other side of the pillar] What on earth is Freddy doing?  I shall get pneumonia if I stay in this draught any longer.

The note taker [to himself, hastily making a note of her pronunciation of “monia”] Earlscourt.

The daughter [violently] Will you please keep your impertinent remarks to yourself?

The note taker.  Did I say that out loud?  I didn’t mean to.  I beg your pardon.  Your mother’s Epsom, unmistakeably.