But we'll go into that booth, if you want to see the thick of it, sir; that's to say, if you're not ashamed.' 'I hope we need neither of us do anything to be ashamed of there; and as for seeing, I begin to agree with you, that what makes the whole thing most curious is its intense dulness.' 'What upon earth is that ?' 'I say, look out there!' 'Well, you look out yourself!' This was caused by a violent blow across the shins with a thick stick, the deed of certain drunken wiseacres who were persisting in playing in the dark the never very lucrative game of three sticks a penny, conducted by a couple of gipsies.

Poor fellows! there was one excuse for them.

It was the only thing there to play at, except a set of skittles; and on those they had lost their money every Saturday night for the last seven years each at his own village beer-shop.
So into the booth they turned; and as soon as Lancelot's eyes were accustomed to the reeking atmosphere, he saw seated at two long temporary tables of board, fifty or sixty of 'My Brethren,' as clergymen call them in their sermons, wrangling, stupid, beery, with sodden eyes and drooping lips--interspersed with more girls and brazen-faced women, with dirty flowers in their caps, whose whole business seemed to be to cast jealous looks at each other, and defend themselves from the coarse overtures of their swains.
Lancelot had been already perfectly astonished at the foulness of language which prevailed; and the utter absence of anything like chivalrous respect, almost of common decency, towards women.

But lo! the language of the elder women was quite as disgusting as that of the men, if not worse.

He whispered a remark on the point to Tregarva, who shook his head.
'It's the field-work, sir--the field-work, that does it all.