"She's gorn out."

The information was vouchsafed by a little boy in petticoats, who had toddled uncertainly from the other side of the street, and now stood clinging to the railings with grubby hands.

Mrs. Grimps scurried back again to the scene of disaster.

She was just in time to see Mrs. Sawney take what appeared to be the tail-end of a header into Mrs. Bindle's back-garden, displaying in the process a pair of stockings that owed little to the wash-tub, and less to the darning-needle.

"Get some water," she gasped, as she picked herself up and once more consigned her hosiery to the seclusion of her skirts. Mrs. Grimps dashed into the scullery.

A minute later she re-appeared with a large pail, from which water slopped as she walked. With much grunting and a considerable wetting of her own clothes, she succeeded in passing it over the fence to her neighbour.

With one hand grasping the handle and the other the rim at the base, Mrs. Sawney staggered towards the fire and inverted the pail. Then, with a scream, she dropped the pail, threw her apron over her head, and ran from the cloud of steam and the deluge of blacks that her rash act had occasioned.

"'Urt yerself?" enquired Mrs. Grimps, solicitously[Pg 56] as she gazed mournfully at her ruined "wash", upon which big flakes of black were descending like locusts upon the fair lands of Pharaoh.

[Pg 56]

Mrs. Sawney removed the apron from her head, and blinked up at the sky, as if to assure herself that the blessing of sight was still hers.

"The wicked cat!" she vociferated, when she found that no damage had been done. "Come on, let's put it out," she exhorted as, with a swift movement, she picked up the pail and handed it over the fence to the waiting Mrs. Grimps.

Ten minutes later, the fire was extinguished; but the washing was ruined.

Mrs. Sawney gazed across the fence at a dishevelled caricature of Mrs. Grimps, with the full consciousness that she herself must look even worse. She also realised that she had to make the return journey over the fence, under the critical eyes of Mrs. Grimps, and that to climb a fence without an exposure of leg was an impossibility.

Both women were wet to 

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