But now her language is the language of a rough shearer in a
"rough shed" on a blazing hot day.
After a while my mate calls out to her:
"Oh! for God's sake give it a rest!"
Whereupon Mrs Johnson straightway opens on him and his ancestry, and
his mental, moral, and physical condition--especially the latter. She
accuses him of every crime known to Christian countries and some
Asiatic and ancient ones. She wants to know how long he has been out
of jail for kicking his wife to pieces that time when she was up as a
witness against him, and whether he is in for the same thing again?
(She has never set eyes on him, by the way, nor he on her.)
He calls back that she is not a respectable woman, and he knows all
about her.
Thereupon she shrieks at him and bangs and kicks at her door, and
demands his name and address. It would appear that she is a
respectable woman, and hundreds can prove it, and she is going to make
him prove it in open court.
He calls back that his name is Percy Reginald Grainger, and his town
residence is "The Mansions," Macleay Street, next to Mr Isaacs, the
magistrate, and he also gives her the address of his solicitor.
She bangs and shrieks again, and states that she will get his name
from the charge sheet in the morning and have him up for criminal
libel, and have his cell mate up as a witness--and hers, too. But
just here a policeman comes along and closes her wicket with a bang
and cuts her off, so that her statements become indistinct, or come
only as shrieks from a lost soul in an underground dungeon.
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