"Dickens, Charles - The Old Curiosity Shop" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickens Charles)

smoke and lounge away one's life, and lie sleeping in the sun upon a
hot tarpaulin, in a dull, slow, sluggish barge, must be happiness
unalloyed--and where some, and a very different class, pause with
heaver loads than they, remembering to have heard or read in old
time that drowning was not a hard death, but of all means of suicide
the easiest and best.

Covent Garden Market at sunrise too, in the spring or summer, when
the fragrance of sweet flowers is in the air, over-powering even the
unwholesome streams of last night's debauchery, and driving the
dusky thrust, whose cage has hung outside a garret window all night
long, half mad with joy! Poor bird! the only neighbouring thing at all
akin to the other little captives, some of whom, shrinking from the
hot hands of drunken purchasers, lie drooping on the path already,
while others, soddened by close contact, await the time when they
shall be watered and freshened up to please more sober company,
and make old clerks who pass them on their road to business,
wonder what has filled their breasts with visions of the country.

But my present purpose is not to expatiate upon my walks. The story
I am about to relate, and to which I shall recur at intervals, arose
out of one of these rambles; and thus I have been led to speak of
them by way of preface.

One night I had roamed into the City, and was walking slowly on in
my usual way, musing upon a great many things, when I was
arrested by an inquiry, the purport of which did not reach me, but
which seemed to be addressed to myself, and was preferred in a soft
sweet voice that struck me very pleasantly. I turned hastily round
and found at my elbow a pretty little girl, who begged to be directed
to a certain street at a considerable distance, and indeed in quite
another quarter of the town.

It is a very long way from here,' said I, 'my child.'

'I know that, sir,' she replied timidly. 'I am afraid it is a very long
way, for I came from there to-night.'

'Alone?' said I, in some surprise.

'Oh, yes, I don't mind that, but I am a little frightened now, for I
had lost my road.'

'And what made you ask it of me? Suppose I should tell you wrong?'

'I am sure you will not do that,' said the little creature,' you are such
a very old gentleman, and walk so slow yourself.'

I cannot describe how much I was impressed by this appeal and the
energy with which it was made, which brought a tear into the child's