He did not resent this, knowing himself dust--and that anything but gold-dust.
Moses had hardly emerged from the little arched passage which led to the Square, when sounds of strife fell upon his ears.

Two stout women chatting amicably at their doors, had suddenly developed a dispute.

In Zachariah Square, when you wanted to get to the bottom of a quarrel, the cue was not "find the woman," but find the child.

The high-spirited bantlings had a way of pummelling one another in fistic duels, and of calling in their respective mothers when they got the worse of it--which is cowardly, but human.

The mother of the beaten belligerent would then threaten to wring the "year," or to twist the nose of the victorious party--sometimes she did it.