text:  I was just pausing to enquire my way of a slatternly-looking woman who stood considerably in front of the door of a dirty-looking house in one of the dirtiest lanes I had yet explored and who with an apron thrown round her shoulders to supply it seemed to me the absence of their appropriate garments appeared from the direction of her looks to be awaiting some one's arrival when a lad hastened up the opposite side of the alley and breathlessly announced to her that "the docther wouldn't come 'thout he first got his fee