Explore "Benno and Some of the Push" by Edward Dyson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
IT was noon of the first Tuesday in November, and there was half-holiday at Spats's. Factory hands were streaming from the lift door into Pepper-lane, the majority squealing and jubilant, like kiddies unexpectedly delivered from scholastic bondage, but many of the Beauties, severely decorous in gay Cup dresses and extravagant hats, prepared for the inexpensive fascinations of the Hill.
Mr. Ben Dickson, recording angel of the topmost flat, leaned desolately on the western wall, and answered the badinage of the girls with flabby interest. Benno was "broke," so depressed financially that a corresponding moral condition was induced, and the small clerk was really as hapless as a tarred cat. But in no circumstances was it the disposition of our Mr. Dickson to expose his penuriousness to a bitter world, barren of respect for honest poverty; even as he mourned his pitiful lack of pence he sedulously rattled a bald-faced six-pence on a latch-key and a lucky penny with a Boer bullet wound in it, with the object of asserting his competence.