88. When the persuading andthe planning for the western railroads had finally been completed, thereally challenging task remained: the dangerous, sweaty, backbreaking, brawling business of actually building the lines.
It was rumoured that he had been seen brawling with foreign sailors in a low den in the distant parts of Whitechapel, and that he consorted with thieves and coiners and knew the mysteries of their trade.
He was going out of his way to hurt and humiliate her and she writhed as she thought how she had longed for his homecoming, while all the time he was drunk and brawling with police in a bawdy house.
As he held her to his heart and turned her beautiful head between his face and the brawling crowd, so that his tears and her lips might come together unseen, a few of the people fell to dancing.
For a long time I knew of Zamilla only that she was " the one what got shot" . I pictured a leaf-brown hussy subject to brawling, whose wild life finally caught up with her. I was never more mistaken.