It was a dull October morning, and heavy, rolling fog-wreaths lay low over the wet, grey roofs of the Woolwich houses. Down in the long, brick-lined streets all was sodden and greasy and cheerless. From the high buildings of the Arsenal came the whirr of many wheels, the thudding of weights, and the buzz and babel of human toil. Beyond, the dwellings of the workingmen, smoke-stained and unlovely, radiated away in a lessening perspective of narrowing road and dwindling wall.

There were few folk in the streets, for the toilers had all been absorbed since break of day by the huge, smoke-spouting monster, which sucked in the manhood of the town, to belch it forth, weary and work-stained, every night. Stout women, with thick, red arms and dirty aprons, stood upon the whitened doorsteps, leaning upon their brooms, and shrieking their morning greetings across the road. One had gathered a small knot of cronies around her, and was talking energetically, with little shrill titters from her audience to punctuate her remarks.

‘Old enough to know better!’ she cried, in answer to an exclamation from one of the listeners. ‘Why, ‘ow old is he at all? Blessed if I could ever make out.’

‘Well, it ain't so hard to reckon,’ said a sharp-featured, pale-faced woman, with watery-blue eyes. ‘He's been at the battle o’ Waterloo, and has the pension and medal to prove it.’

‘That were a ter’ble long time agone,’ remarked a third. ‘It were afore I were born.’

‘It were fifteen year after the beginnin’ of the century,’ cried a younger woman, who had stood leaning against the wall, with a smile of superior knowledge upon her face. ‘My Bill was a-saying so last Sabbath, when I spoke to him o’ old Daddy Brewster, here.’

‘And suppose he spoke truth, Missus Simpson, ‘ow long agone do that make it?’

‘It's eighty-one now,’ said the original speaker, checking off the years upon her coarse, red fingers, ‘and that were fifteen. Ten, and ten, and ten, and ten, and ten—why, it's only sixty and six year, so he ain't so old after all.’