Mrs Nash's temper was never to be relied on, and it was ten to one she might lock us out for the night.
Luckily Jack was up to all the short cuts, and he piloted me through more than one queer-looking slum on the way.
At last we were getting near our journey's end, and the prospect of a "lock-out" from our lodgings was looming unpleasantly near, when Jack took me by the arm and turned up a dark narrow passage.
"I'm nearly certain it's got a way out at the other end," he said, "and if so it will take us right close to the square." I followed him, trusting he was right, and inwardly marvelling at his knowledge of the ins and outs of the great city.
But what a fearful "skeery"-looking hole that passage was! There were wretched tumbledown houses on either side, so wretched and tumbledown that it seemed impossible any one could live in them.

But the houses were nothing to the people.

The court was simply swarming with people.

Drunken and swearing men; drunken and swearing women; half-naked children who swore too.

It was through such a company that we had to thread our way down my friend Smith's "short cut." As we went on it became worse, and what was most serious was that everybody seemed to come out to their doors to stare at us.