The semblance of an inn is attempted to be given to this wretched
place by fragments of conventional red curtaining in the windows,
which rags are made muddily transparent in the night-season by
feeble lights of rush or cotton dip burning dully in the close air
of the inside. As Durdles and Jasper come near, they are addressed
by an inscribed paper lantern over the door, setting forth the
purport of the house. They are also addressed by some half-dozen
other hideous small boys--whether twopenny lodgers or followers or
hangers-on of such, who knows!--who, as if attracted by some
carrion-scent of Deputy in the air, start into the moonlight, as
vultures might gather in the desert, and instantly fall to stoning
him and one another.
'Stop, you young brutes,' cries Jasper angrily, 'and let us go by!'
This remonstrance being received with yells and flying stones,
according to a custom of late years comfortably established among
the police regulations of our English communities, where Christians
are stoned on all sides, as if the days of Saint Stephen were
revived, Durdles remarks of the young savages, with some point,
that 'they haven't got an object,' and leads the way down the lane.
At the corner of the lane, Jasper, hotly enraged, checks his
companion and looks back. All is silent. Next moment, a stone
coming rattling at his hat, and a distant yell of 'Wake-Cock!
Warning!' followed by a crow, as from some infernally-hatched
Chanticleer, apprising him under whose victorious fire he stands,
he turns the corner into safety, and takes Durdles home: Durdles
stumbling among the litter of his stony yard as if he were going to
turn head foremost into one of the unfinished tombs.
Pages:
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70