“It is certainly odd,” I answered, “how very much they both recall—­”

“Our friend at lunch!  Yes, extraordinary.  See here”; she pulled out a pencil and drew the quick outline of a face in her note-book.  “That is what is central and essential to the type.  They have this sort of profile.  Women with faces like that always get assaulted.”

Travers glanced over her shoulder.  “Quite true,” he assented, with his bourgeois nod.  “Nurse Wade in her time has shown me dozens of them.  Round dozens:  bakers’ dozens!  They all belong to that species.  In fact, when a woman of this type is brought in to us wounded now, I ask at once, ‘Husband?’ and the invariable answer comes pat:  ‘Well, yes, sir; we had some words together.’  The effect of words, my dear fellow, is something truly surprising.”

“They can pierce like a dagger,” I mused.

“And leave an open wound behind that requires dressing,” Travers added, unsuspecting.  Practical man, Travers!

“But why do they get assaulted—­the women of this type?” I asked, still bewildered.

“Number 87 has her mother just come to see her,” my sorceress interposed.  “She’s an assault case; brought in last night; badly kicked and bruised about the head and shoulders.  Speak to the mother.  She’ll explain it all to you.”

Travers and I moved over to the cot her hand scarcely indicated.  “Well, your daughter looks pretty comfortable this afternoon, in spite of the little fuss,” Travers began, tentatively.

“Yus, she’s a bit tidy, thanky,” the mother answered, smoothing her soiled black gown, grown green with long service.  “She’ll git on naow, please Gord.  But Joe most did for ’er.”

“How did it all happen?” Travers asked, in a jaunty tone, to draw her out.

“Well, it was like this, sir, yer see.  My daughter, she’s a lidy as keeps ’erself to ‘erself, as the sayin’ is, an’ ’olds ’er ’ead up.  She keeps up a proper pride, an’ minds ’er ‘ouse an’ ’er little uns.  She ain’t no gadabaht.  But she ’ave a tongue, she ’ave”; the mother lowered her voice cautiously, lest the “lidy” should hear.  “I don’t deny it that she ’ave a tongue, at times, through myself ‘avin’ suffered from it.  And when she do go on, Lord bless you, why, there ain’t no stoppin’ of ’er.”

“Oh, she has a tongue, has she?” Travers replied, surveying the “case” critically.  “Well, you know, she looks like it.”

“So she do, sir; so she do.  An’ Joe, ’e’s a man as wouldn’t ’urt a biby—­not when ’e’s sober, Joe wouldn’t.  But ’e’d bin aht; that’s where it is; an’ ’e cum ’ome lite, a bit fresh, through ‘avin’ bin at the friendly lead; an’ my daughter, yer see, she up an’ give it to ’im.  My word, she did give it to ‘im!  An’ Joe, ’e’s a peaceable man when ’e ain’t a bit fresh; ’e’s more like a friend to ’er than an ’usband, Joe is; but ’e lost ’is temper that time, as yer may say, by reason o’ bein’ fresh, an’ ’e knocked ’er abaht a little, an’ knocked ’er teeth aht.  So we brought ’er to the orspital.”