Bigben Close, and its panting desire for freer and fresher scenes; I
should have set up the image of Duty, the fetish of Perseverance, in my
small bedroom at Mrs. King's lodgings, and they two should have been
my household gods, from which my darling, my cherished-in-secret,
Imagination, the tender and the mighty, should never, either by softness
or strength, have severed me. But this was not all; the antipathy which
had sprung up between myself and my employer striking deeper root and
spreading denser shade daily, excluded me from every glimpse of the
sunshine of life; and I began to feel like a plant growing in humid
darkness out of the slimy walls of a well.

Antipathy is the only word which can express the feeling Edward
Crimsworth had for me--a feeling, in a great measure, involuntary, and
which was liable to be excited by every, the most trifling movement,
look, or word of mine. My southern accent annoyed him; the degree
of education evinced in my language irritated him; my punctuality,
industry, and accuracy, fixed his dislike, and gave it the high flavour
and poignant relish of envy; he feared that I too should one day make a
successful tradesman. Had I been in anything inferior to him, he would
not have hated me so thoroughly, but I knew all that he knew, and, what
was worse, he suspected that I kept the padlock of silence on mental
wealth in which he was no sharer. If he could have once placed me in a
ridiculous or mortifying position, he would have forgiven me much, but I
was guarded by three faculties--Caution, Tact, Observation; and
prowling and prying as was Edward's malignity, it could never baffle
the lynx-eyes of these, my natural sentinels. Day by day did his malice
watch my tact, hoping it would sleep, and prepared to steal snake-like
on its slumber; but tact, if it be genuine, never sleeps.

I had received my first quarter's wages, and was returning to my
lodgings, possessed heart and soul with the pleasant feeling that
the master who had paid me grudged every penny of that hard-earned
pittance--(I had long ceased to regard Mr. Crimsworth as my brother--he
was a hard, grinding master; he wished to be an inexorable tyrant: that
was all). Thoughts, not varied but strong, occupied my mind; two voices
spoke within me; again and again they uttered the same monotonous
phrases. One said: "William, your life is intolerable." The other: "What
can you do to alter it?" I walked fast, for it was a cold, frosty n