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What with the misery for her children, the poor, and the rain, her mind was like a wound exposed to dry in the air. At this point the cab stopped, for it was in danger of being crushed like an egg-shell. The wide Embankment which had had room for cannonballs and squadrons, had now shrunk to a cobbled lane steaming with smells of malt and oil and blocked by waggons.
Walking along the narrow cobbled path that led past the harbour and up on to the cliff, Mavis and Merle looked at the scene around with that sense of rejoicing proprietorship with which we are wont to revisit the pet place of our adoption.
I don't know how I got into the car. It was a blur. I was frightened. Some terrible thing had occurred, and Hobart knew it. I remember a few words spoken to the driver. "Speed, speed, no limit; never mind the law and Chatterton Place!" After that the convulsive jerking over the cobbled streets, a climbing over hills and twisted corners. And Hobart at my side.
The street presently turned into a paved one, and trolley lines appeared; then brick buildings and shops, and before they knew it they were in the busy, crowded business thoroughfare. Lou would have paused, gaping and wondering if New York could be anything like this, but Jim hurried her down the steep, cobbled way which led to the ferry. Once there, he took her to a seat in the waiting-room.
The glory of those rides over the mossy softness of the woodland paths, where the sunlight fell, in dancing patches, through the thick, moving foliage, and shy deer peeped from the bracken, with soft eyes and gentle movements; out on to the wild liberty of the moors, where Icon, snuffing the fresher air, would stretch his neck and gallop for pure joy at having left cobbled streets and paved courtyards far behind him.
So the palmer was persuaded; and Robin put on the old man's hat, which stood full high in the crown; and his cloak, patched with black and blue and red, like Joseph's coat of many colors in its old age; and his breeches, which had been sewed over with so many patterns that the original was scarce discernible; and his tattered hose; and his shoes, cobbled above and below.
The salesman Tony was come to deal with had a tolerable selection of old boots, very few of them pairs, some with pretty good upper-leathers, but with no soles worth speaking of; and others thickly cobbled and patched, but good enough to keep the feet dry, without presenting a very creditable appearance. For the first time in his life Tony found out the perplexity of having a choice to make.
Certain dark doorways also secreted a solitary sentry, and my own office boasted a corporal's guard presumably because the Field-Cashier had his rooms on the first floor. The sanitation was truly medieval; on either side of the cobbled streets noisome gutters formed an open sewer into which housewives emptied their slop-pails every morning, while mongrel dogs nosed among the garbage.
A long line of sturdy, bronzed men, in dust-covered khaki, tramping over the grey cobbled road, singing and whistling at intervals; the rattling and clicking of the various metallic parts of their equipment forming a kind of low accompaniment to their songs.
From that hour till his death, he cobbled and sang to the wonderful amusement of the good citizens; and when seventy-seven years had passed gaily over his head, “he took an inventory of his poetical stock-in-trade, and found, according to his narrative, that his works filled thirty volumes folio, and consisted of 4,273 songs, 1,700 miscellaneous poems, and 208 tragedies, comedies and farces, making an astounding sum-total of 6,181 pieces of all kinds.
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