“Oh, just to keep walking,” I said, “and viddy what turns up, O my little brothers.”

So we scatted out into the big winter nochy and walked down Marghanita Boulevard and then turned into Boothby Avenue, and there we found what we were pretty well looking for, a malenky jest to start off the evening with. There was a doddery starry schoolmaster type veck, glasses on and his rot open to the cold nochy air. He had books under his arm and a crappy umbrella and was coming round the corner from the Public Biblio, which not many lewdies used these days. You never really saw many of the older bourgeois type out after nightfall those days, what with the shortage of police and we fine young malchickiwicks about, and this prof type chelloveck was the only one walking in the whole of the street. So we goolied up to him, very polite, and I said: “Pardon me, brother.”

He looked a malenky bit poogly when he viddied the four of us like that, coming up so quiet and polite and smiling, but he said: “Yes? What is it?” in a very loud teacher-type goloss, as if he was trying to show us he wasn’t poogly. I said:

“I see you have books under your arm, brother. It is indeed a rare pleasure these days to come across somebody that still reads, brother.”

“Oh,” he said, all shaky. “Is it? Oh, I see.” And he kept looking from one to the other of we four, finding himself now like in the middle of a very smiling and polite square.

“Yes,” I said. “It would interest me greatly, brother, if you would kindly allow me to see what books those are that you have under your arm. I like nothing better in this world than a good clean book, brother.”

“Clean,” he said. “Clean, eh?” And then Pete skvatted these three books from him and handed them round real skorry.

Being three, we all had one each to viddy at except for Dim. The one I had was called ‘Elementary Crystallography,’ so I opened it up and said: “Excellent, really first-class,” keeping turning the pages. Then I said in a very shocked type goloss: “But what is this here? What is this filthy slovo? I blush to look at this word. You disappoint me, brother, you do really.”