“She pretty?”
“Is she not?”
“No.”
“Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the whole court?”
“Rot the admiration of the whole court! Who made the Old
Bailey a judge of beauty? She was a golden-haired doll!”
“Do you know, Sydney,” said Mr. Stryver, looking at him with
sharp eyes, and slowly drawing a hand across his florid face; “do
you know, I rather thought, at the time, that you sympathised with
the golden-haired doll, and were quick to see what happened to
the golden-haired doll?”
“Quick to see what happened! If a girl, doll or no doll, swoons
within a yard or two of a man’s nose, he can see it without a
perspective-glass. I pledge you, but I deny the beauty. And now I’ll
have no more drink; I’ll get to bed.”
When his host followed him out on the staircase with a candle,
to light him down the stairs, the day was coldly looking in through
its grimy windows. When he got out of the house, the air was cold
and sad, the dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole
scene like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning
round and round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
had risen far away, and the fine spray of it in its advance had
begun to overwhelm the city.
Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man
stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a
moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of
honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city
of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and
graces looked upon him, gardens in whi