die once, sir, mustn’t we? And if it ain’t one way it’s another, and if it ain’t sooner it’s later. Only some folks is misfortunit more than others. Would you care for a cup of tea, sir, while you’re waitin’?”
I accepted the tea, to get rid of her. The stove, however, turned out to be in a corner of the studio, and having lit the gas and put the kettle on, she returned. All the time she was speaking, she rubbed one skinny hand over the other with a curious, greedy action.
“Very strange ’ow things turns out, ain’t it, sir? There was a gentleman lived down our street, a cats’-meat man ’e was, and the best cats’-meat in the neighbourhood—thought very ’ighly of by all, ’e was. ’E married a girl out of one of them shops w’ere they sells costooms on ’ire purchase. They ain’t no good to nobody, them places, if you asks me. Well, ’e died sudden.”
“Did he?”
“Ho, yes! very sudden, ’e died. A very ’ot summer it was, and they brought it in ’e’d got the dissenter, with eating somethink as didn’t agree with ’im. So it may ’a’ bin, far be it from me to say otherwise. But afore the year was up she’d gone and married the young man wot was manager of the clothes-shop. A good marriage it was for ’er, too. Ho, yes! She didn’t lost nothink by ’er ’usband dyin’ w’en ’e did, if you understand me, sir.”
I made no answer. She took the kettle off and filled the teapot.
“Now, that’s a nice cup o’ tea, sir. You won’t find nothink wrong with that . That’s ’olesome, that is. I knows ’ow to make the sort of tea that gentlemen like. Cutts is my name, Mrs. Cutts. They all knows me about ’ere. I been doin’ for the artists this thirty year, and I’m up to all their goin’s-on. I know ’ow to cook their breakfisses and look after their bits of paintings and sich, an’ w’en to speak an’ w’en to ’old my tongue, sir. That’s wot they pays me for.”