"
"No, it could not be the same thing," said Helen, gently. "But you find
some comfort here?"
"Some little comfort," he answered. "One can't expect much."
They went together into the cloisters, and as they came near the recess
where the old man rested Helen said:
"Why, he has fallen asleep! He must have been very tired. And he has
dropped his hat and stick. Thank you. If you will put them down there, I
will watch by his side until he wakes up. I don't suppose he will sleep
for long."
The workman stooped down to pick up the hat and stick, and glanced
at the sleeper. Something in the sleeper's countenance arrested his
attention. He turned to the girl, and saw that she was watching him.
"What is it?" she asked anxiously. "What is the matter with you?"
He tried to speak, but his voice failed him, and all he could do was to
point with trembling hand to the old man.
Helen looked, and a loud cry broke from her lips. The old man was dead.
THE OMNIBUS, By Quiller-Couch
All that follows was spoken in a small tavern, a stone's throw from
Cheapside, the day before I left London. It was spoken in a dull voice,
across a greasy table-cloth, and amid an atmosphere so thick with the
reek of cooking that one longed to change it for the torrid street
again, to broil in an ampler furnace. Old Tom Pickford spoke it, who has
been a clerk for fifty-two years in Tweedy's East India warehouse,
and in all that time has never been out of London, but when he takes a
holiday spends it in hanging about Tweedy's, and observing that unlovely
place of business from the outside. The dust, if not the iron, of
Tweedy's has entered into his soul; and Tweedy's young men know him
as "the Mastodon." He is a thin, bald septuagenarian, with sloping
shoulders, and a habit of regarding the pavement when he walks, so that
he seems to steer his way by instinct rather than sight. In general
he keeps silence while eating his chop; and on this occasion there was
something unnatural in his utterance, a divorce of manner between the
speaker and his words, such as one would expect in a sibyl disclaiming
under stress of the god. I fancied it had something to do with a black
necktie that he wore instead of the blue bird's-eye cravat familiar to
Tweedy's, and with his extraordinary conduct in refusing to-day the chop
that the waiter brought, and limiting his lunch to cheese and lettuce.
Having pulled the lettuce to pieces, he pushed himself ba
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