The three women watched the performance without a word, critical as spectators at a play.

When they saw there would be no scratching, they resumed their conversation.
"W'en a woman takes to drink, she's found a short cut to 'ell, an' lets everybody know it," said Mrs Yabsley, briefly.

"But this won't git my work done," and she tucked up her sleeves and went in.
The Push, bent on killing time, and despairing of any fresh diversion in the street, dispersed slowly, one by one, to meet again at night.
The Cardigan Street Push, composed of twenty or thirty young men of the neighbourhood, was a social wart of a kind familiar to the streets of Sydney.

Originally banded together to amuse themselves at other people's expenses, the Push found new cares and duties thrust upon them, the chief of which was chastising anyone who interfered with their pleasures.

Their feats ranged from kicking an enemy senseless, and leaving him for dead, to wrecking hotel windows with blue metal, if the landlord had contrived to offend them.