“When he came out of Holborn Passage he joined the vast throng of pedestrians moving towards the City on this bright autumn morning. Yet he had seen something—he was sure of it—and he turned back. He had risen early, and he had at least one hour before he needed to sit before his high desk in the Dividend Office. Holborn Passage itself was little more than an alley, one of those dark threads woven into the city’s fabric which accumulate soot and dust over the centuries. There was a pipe shop her...e as well as a mantua-maker, a carpenter’s workshop and a bookshop. All of them wore with resignation the faded patina of age and abandonment. The gowns were discoloured, the pipes on display would never be smoked, and the workshop seemed untenanted. Yes. This was what he had seen. In the window of the bookshop was displayed a document, written in a sixteenth-century Secretary hand. Charles loved all the tokens of antiquity. He had stood on the site of the old Aldgate pump, and imagined water being drawn from the wooden pipe five hundred years before; he had paced the line of the Roman wall, and noticed how the streets naturally conformed to it; he had lingered over the sundials in the Inner Temple, and traced their mottoes with his finger.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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