Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett — Read

Mrs. Perkins's boy, who lived with Mrs. Perkins in the house next door to Elsie's old home in Riceyman Square, and who had a chivalric regard for Elsie, fortunately happened to be out in the Square. In the darkness he was engaged in amorous dialectic with a girl of his own age -- fourteen or fifteen -- and they were both imperfectly sheltering under the eve of an outhouse (church property) at the northeast corner of the churchyard. Their voices were raised from time to time, and Elsie recognized his as she approached the house. Mrs. Perkins's boy wore over his head a sack which he had irregularly borrowed for the night from the express parcel company in the tails of whose vans he spent about twelve hours a day hanging on to a piece of string suspended from the van roof. That he had energy left in the evening to practise savagely-delicate sentimental backchat in the rain was proof enough of a somewhat remarkable quality of "brightness."

Elsie had chosen him for her mission because he was hardened to the world and thoroughly accustomed to the enterprise of affronting entrance-halls and claiming the attention of the guardians thereof. She now called to him across the roadway in an assured, commanding tone which indicated that she knew him to be her slave and that, in spite of her advanced years, she could more than hold her own with him against any chit in the Square. There was an aspect of Elsie's individuality which no living person knew except Mrs. Perkins's boy. He went hurrying to her.