He resolved to reduce his original explanation to the simplest possible terms to start with and expand it afterwards, if he survived. Gripping his piece of paper firmly in his hand, he confronted the shop girl with the eye of a lion-tamer, and said: “Have you got Hendry’s Old Illumination Colours?”
The young woman gazed at him for a few seconds; and there was on her face exactly the same expression as if he had spoken to her in Russian or Chinese. She forgot for a moment all that mechanical and merciless civility which accompanied the rapid and recognised exchanges. She did not beg his pardon or go through any such form. She simply said, “Eh?” and her voice rose sharply with that deep, incurable, querulous complaint and protest which is the very soul of the accent that we call Cockney.
T
