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Updated: June 12, 2025
Thus, the revolving chimney-pots on one great stack of buildings seemed to be turning gravely to each other every now and then, and whispering the result of their separate observation of what was going on below. Others, of a crook-backed shape, appeared to be maliciously holding themselves askew, that they might shut the prospect out and baffle Todgers's.
But the saddest thing to see was field after field of rich grain mown within a few inches of the ground by those swift, keen sickles which no man's hand had held. In the section of the city through which Lynde passed to the railroad the streets were literally strewn with broken tiles and chimney-pots. In some places the brown and purple fragments lay ankle-deep, like leaves in autumn.
Across the city, beyond the tin roofs and the chimney-pots, the sun was going down in a mist as sheer as gauze, and the surrounding atmosphere was charged with opalescent lights. Her eyes rested upon it with a quick sense of its beauty; then the sunset lost itself in the round of her thoughts. She had missed Dudley, and she was glad that he was coming home to-night.
It was the juvenile autumn wind trying its strength; not until well on in the winter, when it has full-grown lungs, does it take to playing with tiles and chimney-pots. A sparrow sat crouched together upon the dog-kennel; it drew its head down among its feathers, blinked its eyes, and betrayed no interest in anything. But in reality it noted carefully where the corn was deposited.
A scarlet-leaved creeper came curling over the windows, through which the setting sun was pouring a flood of golden light. It was all flowers and freshness. Oh, how unlike those black chimney-pots in St. Alban's Place, London, on which these weary eyes are accustomed to look.
Turnbull enjoyed it partly as a joke, even more perhaps as a reversion from the things he hated modernity and monotony and civilisation. To break up the vast machinery of modern life and use the fragments as engines of war, to make the barricade of omnibuses and points of vantage of chimney-pots, was to him a game worth infinite risk and trouble.
The chimney-pots were measured and compared with the size of Manon la Blonde's body to see if she could have got in that way; but a child of six could not have passed up or down those red-clay pipes, which, in modern buildings, take the place of the vast chimneys of old-fashioned houses. But for this singular and annoying difficulty, Theodore would have been executed within a week.
And as they passed through Kentish Town, past Primrose Hill into Hampstead way, solitary farm-houses and lowly cottages gave way to burgher dwellings in orderly array, with manor-houses here and there, and in the distance palaces and towers reared their heads above the crowding chimney-pots.
It would be much simpler, she thought, to die than to attempt life again without Vincent. She went to the window and looked out at the roofs of neighboring houses, a disordered conglomeration of water-tanks and skylights and chimney-pots. Then nearer, almost under her feet, she looked into a courtyard of the hospital and saw a pale, emaciated man in a wheel-chair.
Ah! It's pleasant to drop into my own easy-chair my dear though a little palpitating what with trotting up-stairs and what with trotting down, and why kitchen stairs should all be corner stairs is for the builders to justify though I do not think they fully understand their trade and never did, else why the sameness and why not more conveniences and fewer draughts and likewise making a practice of laying the plaster on too thick I am well convinced which holds the damp, and as to chimney-pots putting them on by guess-work like hats at a party and no more knowing what their effect will be upon the smoke bless you than I do if so much, except that it will mostly be either to send it down your throat in a straight form or give it a twist before it goes there.
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