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Updated: May 14, 2025
The month of August passed, and, after all these delays, they decided that it was to be irrevocably fixed for the 4th September a Monday. At length the Saturday before arrived. Rodolphe came in the evening earlier than usual. "Everything is ready?" she asked him. "Yes." Then they walked round a garden-bed, and went to sit down near the terrace on the kerb-stone of the wall.
Up one street and down another the boy ran, often looking behind to see whether he was being followed, and at last stopping altogether, simply because he could not run any farther. He sat down on the kerb-stone, and then he saw for the first time that it had begun to rain quite fast.
Nasty, short-tempered chap he was, but I don't think I was more glad to see anybody in my life. I hugged 'im till 'e nearly lost 'is breath, and then he sat me down on the kerb-stone and asked me wot I meant by it. Wot with the excitement and the running I couldn't speak at fust, and when I did he said I was trying to deceive 'im.
He was staring at a shop-window in Oxford Street studying, indeed, the print of a patent mowing-machine, but thinking, I fear, more of past scenes in certain well-lit rooms, on slippery floors, than of the velvet lawns at home when a barouche drew up to the kerb-stone with such trampling of hoofs, such pulling about of horses' mouths, such a jerk and vibration of the whole concern, as denoted a smart carriage with considerable pretension, a body-coachman of no ordinary calibre.
"This here is the dodge you goes outside and lies down on the kerb-stone; whereby I spies you a-sleeping in the streets, contrary to Act o' Parliament; whereby it is my duty to take you to the station-house; whereby you gets a night's lodging free gracious for nothing, and company perwided by her Majesty." "Oh, not to the station-house!" I cried in shame and terror.
The driver checked his gaunt horse at the sight of Colwyn standing on the kerb-stone, and raised an interrogative whip. He added a vocal appeal for hire based on the incredible assumption that a man must live, which he proclaimed with a whip elevated to the sodden heavens, calling on a God, invisible in the fog, to bear witness that he hadn't turned a wheel that night.
Nasty, short-tempered chap he was, but I don't think I was more glad to see anybody in my life. I hugged 'im till 'e nearly lost 'is breath, and then he sat me down on the kerb-stone and asked me wot I meant by it. Wot with the excitement and the running I couldn't speak at fust, and when I did he said I was trying to deceive 'im.
"You were lucky to be out of that," answered Jim, shaking his head; "you were lucky not to see the papers. The Occidental called me a fifth-rate kerb-stone broker with water on the brain; another said I was a tree-frog that had got into the same meadow with Longhurst, and had blown myself out till I went pop.
It is one of the commonest scenes in the streets to see a Chinaman squat on the kerb-stone and turn up a fold or two of his trousers to manipulate these little pests; and even the high officials and well-to-do people look upon it as no outrage to the proprieties, to be seen removing one of "China's millions" from the garment of a friend or guest. "All the deep Is restless change." *
He doesn't rush into the throng and 'jump in, for fear the 'bus should extricate itself and drive on without him; he doesn't make confusion worse confounded by intimating his behest; he doesn't soil his bright boots by stepping off the kerb-stone; but, quietly waiting the evaporation of the steam, and the disentanglement of the vehicles, by the smallest possible sign in the world, given at the opportune moment, and a steady adhesion to the flags, the 'bus is obliged either to 'come to, or lose the fare, and he steps quietly in, and squeezes along to the far end, as though intent on going the whole hog of the journey.
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