280
PAUL SMIT H
sure that this thing or that thing will happen that day. I mean you
couldn't bet your life on a certain thing happening, could you?
I don't rightly know how to explain what I mean," she said; and
right away she began to try to tell Ellen Simms about the things that
had gone wrong for us in the past two weeks.
About Maggie Hyland and the fight with the beggars. About
the way I had lost my hat and coat to them. About the stuff lifted
from Mick O'Brien's, and about how we had not made a single
penny on it. About the work done for Miz Robey and how we
had lost to her mother the two pounds Robey had given us, and
about the three shillings she had had to insist on her mother giving
me. And as she talked she stopped now and then to find the right
word to tell of doubts in herself she had not felt before, and to see
if Ellen Simms was following her.
"For instance," she said, looking straight at Ellen Simms, "I
used to think till you told me otherwise that everything was the
same all over. I used to think that every country in the world was
the same, with the same food, the same money, and the same people.
But it isn't like that at all, is it? In fact, if I'm to believe you and
them books up there on them shelves, nothing at all is the way
I imagined it was. Every country is different and every single person
in that country is different. In the same way you, me, and Tucker
is different. Understand?" She paused and looked at me, and then
at Ellen Simms, who gave her a long uncomprehending stare.
"Okay, then,
I'll
tell you what I mean," she said. "For instance,
I know you're a dealer - right. But if some stranger was to come
through that door right now and we were to ask him to tell us what
you were, I bet he wouldn't be able to. At least, not just by looking.
Because indoors and without your shawl you don't look like a dealer.
And neither do you act like one. In the first place every other
dealer that I know keeps what they don't sell on a Saturday night
under their beds till Monday morning. Then if it's cabbage or any–
thing perishable, all they do is tear off the withered leaves and give
what's left a quick hose-down under the pipe, then set it back up
for sale again. But you never do. You never keep anything under
your bed, or in the house overnight, and if you are left with stuff
on your hands, either you sell it cheap or give it away for nothing.
Also you can read and write. And you're neat always and you never
go on the drink the way most of them do.
)
