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Though Ned and I corresponded with tolerable regularity I received no direct answer to this communication till about eighteen months later, when he surprised me by a letter dated from Florence. It began: "Though she tells me you have never understood her " and when I had reached that point I laid it down and stared out of my office window at the chimney-pots and the dirty snow on the roof.
The streets and quays are crowded with the men of many nations and various creeds, to say nothing of varied costume. Turbans and chimney-pots salaam to each other, and fezzes nod to straw hats and wide-awakes. Every one is more than usually sympathetic, for all have their minds, eyes, and hopes, more or less, centred on the "big ship," with her unique and precious cargo.
He found Sissy on her horse at the door, looking pensively along the street, as if she were studying the effect of dusky red on palest blue chimney-pots against the April sky. "So Mr. Hardwicke is out?" she said when they had shaken hands. "I'm so sorry! I wanted him so particularly." "Is it important? Are you in a great hurry?" said Henry.
Availing myself of this permission, which was given with a warm shake of the hand, I sat thinking about Dora, and looking at the sunlight stealing from the chimney-pots down the wall of the opposite house, until Mr. jorkins came. I then went up to Mr. jorkins's room, and evidently astonished Mr. jorkins very much by making my appearance there. 'Come in, Mr. Copperfield, said Mr. jorkins.
Poor England, after such enormous stumbling among the chimney-pots, and somnambulism over all the world for twenty years, finds on awakening, that she is arrived, after all, where she wished to be, and a good deal farther!
Durkin walked to the window, and looked out at the tiled roofs and the squat chimney-pots, above which he could catch a glimpse of bursting sky-rockets and the glow of Greek fire from the narrow canyons of the streets below. "What are all the fireworks for?" he asked her casually. "It's a Saint's Day, of some sort, they told me at the office," she explained.
This roof was divided from those on either hand by a stack of chimneys; to get round the end of these stacks was impossible, or at all events too dangerous a feat unless it were the last resource, but by climbing to the apex of the slates he would be able to reach the chimney-pots, to drag himself up to them, and somehow to tumble over on to the safer side.
No less homely image expresses the contractions and contortions of the houses reaching out the appeal of their desperate chimney-pots and agonized girders. There is one view along the exterior of the town like nothing else on the warfront.
Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Fog everywhere. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights.
She heard his footsteps passing down the corridor, the bell ringing for the lift, the clank of the gates as he stepped in. Once more she gazed out over the uninspiring prospect. There was a little more sunshine upon the river; more of the dusty chimney-pots seemed bathed in its silvery radiance. As she stood there, she felt herself growing calmer. The tension passed from her nerves.
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