Therefore it is, Mr.
Honeythunder, that I consider the platform a sufficiently bad
example and a sufficiently bad school, even in public life; but
hold that, carried into private life, it becomes an unendurable
nuisance.'
'These are strong words, sir!' exclaimed the Philanthropist.
'I hope so,' said Mr. Crisparkle. 'Good morning.'
He walked out of the Haven at a great rate, but soon fell into his
regular brisk pace, and soon had a smile upon his face as he went
along, wondering what the china shepherdess would have said if she
had seen him pounding Mr. Honeythunder in the late little lively
affair. For Mr. Crisparkle had just enough of harmless vanity to
hope that he had hit hard, and to glow with the belief that he had
trimmed the Philanthropic Jacket pretty handsomely.
He took himself to Staple Inn, but not to P. J. T. and Mr.
Grewgious. Full many a creaking stair he climbed before he reached
some attic rooms in a corner, turned the latch of their unbolted
door, and stood beside the table of Neville Landless.
An air of retreat and solitude hung about the rooms and about their
inhabitant. He was much worn, and so were they. Their sloping
ceilings, cumbrous rusty locks and grates, and heavy wooden bins
and beams, slowly mouldering withal, had a prisonous look, and he
had the haggard face of a prisoner. Yet the sunlight shone in at
the ugly garret-window, which had a penthouse to itself thrust out
among the tiles; and on the cracked and smoke-blackened parapet
beyond, some of the deluded sparrows of the place rheumatically
hopped, like little feathered cripples who had left their crutches
in their nests; and there was a play of living leaves at hand that
changed the air, and made an imperfect sort of music in it that
would have been melody in the country.
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