as friendly countenances. He could not read
continuously, but sometimes he opened his Shakespeare, for instance,
and dreamed over a page or two. From such glimpses there remained in
his head a line or a short passage, which he kept repeating to himself
wherever he went; generally some example of sweet or sonorous metre
which had a soothing effect upon him.

With odd result on one occasion. He was walking in one of the back
streets of Islington, and stopped idly to gaze into the window of some
small shop. Standing thus, he forgot himself and presently recited
aloud:

'Caesar, 'tis his schoolmaster: An argument that he is pluck'd, when
hither He sends so poor a pinion of his wing, Which had superfluous
kings for messengers Not many moons gone by.'

The last two lines he uttered a second time, enjoying their magnificent
sound, and then was brought back to consciousness by the loud mocking
laugh of two men standing close by, who evidently looked upon him as a
strayed lunatic.

He kept one suit of clothes for his hours of attendance at the hospital;
it was still decent, and with much care would remain so for a long time.
That which he wore at home and in his street wanderings declared poverty
at every point; it had been discarded before he left the old abode. In
his present state of mind he cared nothing how disreputable he looked to
passers-by. These seedy habiliments were the token of his degradation,
and at times he regarded them (happening to see himself in a shop
mirror) with pleasurable contempt. The same spirit often led him for a
meal to the poorest of eating-houses, places where he rubbed elbows with
ragged creatures who had somehow obtained the price of a cup of coffee
and a slice of bread and butter. He liked to contrast himself with these
comrades in misfortune. 'This is the rate at which the world esteems
me; I am worth no better provision than this.' Or else, instead of
emphasising the contrast, he defiantly took a place among the miserables
of the nether world, and nursed hatred of all who were well-to-do.

One of these he desired to regard with gratitude, but found it difficult
to support that feeling. Carter, the vivacious, though at first
perfectly unembarrassed in his relations with the City Road clerk,
gradually exhibited a change of demeanour. Reardon occasionally found
the young man's eye fixed upon him with a singular expression, and the
secretary's talk, though still as a rule genial, was wont t