Then he followed, but at some distance:
keeping them in view, without appearing to have that object, or being
seen by them.
They went up Parliament Street, past Saint Martin's church, and away by
Saint Giles's to Tottenham Court Road, at the back of which, upon
the western side, was then a place called the Green Lanes. This was a
retired spot, not of the choicest kind, leading into the fields. Great
heaps of ashes; stagnant pools, overgrown with rank grass and duckweed;
broken turnstiles; and the upright posts of palings long since carried
off for firewood, which menaced all heedless walkers with their jagged
and rusty nails; were the leading features of the landscape: while here
and there a donkey, or a ragged horse, tethered to a stake, and cropping
off a wretched meal from the coarse stunted turf, were quite in keeping
with the scene, and would have suggested (if the houses had not done so,
sufficiently, of themselves) how very poor the people were who lived in
the crazy huts adjacent, and how foolhardy it might prove for one who
carried money, or wore decent clothes, to walk that way alone, unless by
daylight.
Poverty has its whims and shows of taste, as wealth has.
Pages:
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586