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Rh and at the same time Rodney began to think about Denham.

“You’re a slave like me, I suppose?” he asked.

“A solicitor, yes.”

“I sometimes wonder why we don’t chuck it. Why don’t you emigrate, Denham? I should have thought that would suit you.”

“I’ve a family.”

“I’m often on the point of going myself. And then I know I couldn’t live without this”—and he waved his hand towards the City of London, which wore, at this moment, the appearance of a town cut out of gray–blue cardboard, and pasted flat against the sky, which was of a deeper blue.

“There are one or two people I’m fond of, and there’s a little good music, and a few pictures, now and then—just enough to keep one dangling about here. Ah, but I couldn’t live with savages! Are you fond of books? Music? Pictures? D’you care at all for first editions? I’ve got a few nice things up here, things I pick up cheap, for I can’t afford to give what they ask.”

They had reached a small court of high eighteenth–century houses, in one of which Rodney had his rooms. They climbed a very steep staircase, through whose uncurtained windows the moonlight fell, illuminating the banisters with their twisted pillars, and the piles of plates set on the window-sills, and jars half-full of milk. Rodney’s rooms were small, but the sitting-room window looked out into a courtyard, with its flagged pavement, and its single tree, and across to the flat red-brick fronts of the opposite houses, which would not have surprised Dr. Johnson, if he had come out of his grave for a turn in the moonlight. Rodney lit his lamp, pulled his curtains, offered Denham a chair, and, flinging the manuscript of his paper on the Elizabethan use of Metaphor on to the table, exclaimed: