Now and again a great
chocolate-and-yellow tramcar ground round a difficult bend under the
hosiery factory.
Ursula was superficially thrilled when she found herself out among the
common people, in the jumbled place piled with old bedding, heaps of
old iron, shabby crockery in pale lots, muffled lots of unthinkable
clothing. She and Birkin went unwillingly down the narrow aisle between
the rusty wares. He was looking at the goods, she at the people.
She excitedly watched a young woman, who was going to have a baby, and
who was turning over a mattress and making a young man, down-at-heel
and dejected, feel it also. So secretive and active and anxious the
young woman seemed, so reluctant, slinking, the young man. He was going
to marry her because she was having a child.
When they had felt the mattress, the young woman asked the old man
seated on a stool among his wares, how much it was. He told her, and
she turned to the young man. The latter was ashamed, and selfconscious.
He turned his face away, though he left his body standing there, and
muttered aside.
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