Clown. ’Twas in the Bunch of Grapes, where, indeed, you have a delight to sit, have you not? Froth. I have so: because it is an open room, and good for winter. Clo. Why, very well then: I hope here be truths. —Measure for Measure.
Five days after the death of Raffles, Mr. Bambridge was standing at his leisure under the large archway leading into the yard of the Green Dragon.
He was not fond of solitary contemplation, but he had only just come out of the house, and any human figure standing at ease under the archway in the early afternoon was as certain to attract companionship as a pigeon which has found something worth pecking at.
In this case there was no material object to feed upon, but the eye of reason saw a probability of mental sustenance in the shape of gossip. Mr.
Hopkins, the meek-mannered draper opposite, was the first to act on this inward vision, being the more ambitious of a little masculine talk because his customers were chiefly women. Mr.
Bambridge was rather curt to the draper, feeling that Hopkins was of course glad to talk to him, but that he was not going to waste much of his talk on Hopkins.
Soon, however, there was a small cluster of more important listeners, who were either deposited from the passers-by, or had sauntered to the spot expressly to see if there were anything going on at the Green Dragon; and Mr.
Bambridge was finding it worth his while to say many impressive things about the fine studs he had been seeing and the purchases he had made on a journey in the north from which he had just returned. Gentlemen present were assured that when they could show him anything to