Colin Clink, Volume 3 (of 3)

CONTENTS

Reappearance of an unexpected customer; together with what passed at a certain interview.
DAY had pretty well broken as Colin trudged back homewards alone. It was one of those dull, leaden, misty, and chilly mornings, which in a town newly stirring from sleep seems to put the stamp and seal of melancholy upon everything external. The buildings at hand looked black,—those at a distance fused into mere shadows by the density of the windless atmosphere,—while the unextinguished lamps grew red-eyed and dim in the white light that had risen over them. Early labourers were trudging to their work; an occasional milkmaid, who looked precisely as though she had never seen a cow in the whole course of her life, banged her pail-handles, and whooped at area-gates; while bakers, who had been up nearly all night manufacturing hot rolls for that interesting portion of the community now snug in bed, slipped down the shutters of their houses leisurely, and stared lack-a-daisically upon the portents of the weather.
Altogether, it was a description of scenery by no means calculated to inspire heavy hearts with unusual joy, or to raise the spirits of any one situated as was poor Colin.
Scarcely knowing what else to do, he turned off at the top of Cheapside, and walked into a well-known coffeehouse in the immediate vicinity of the Post-office, where he ordered breakfast. Two or three tables occupied the room, at which a few early risers were sitting quaffing coffee from cups which, from their size and shape, might readily have been mistaken for so many half-pint pots of ale. Well-fingered books were scattered about the place, and monthly magazines of all sorts, fitted into temporary covers, lay in piles upon the broad chimney-piece. Shortly afterwards the morning papers were brought in by a lad with a large bundle of them under his arm—a circumstance productive of a momentary scramble on the part of those who were anxious to possess themselves of the earliest intelligence of the day, before departing to their occupations. Colin's breakfast was introduced by a little active boy, as brisk as a sand-eel, who waited in the place; and scarcely had Colin begun stirring the mysterious-looking fluid before him with an old dingy pewter spoon, bent one way out at the bottom and the other way at top, by way, perhaps, of producing a counteracting influence, than he involuntarily started as though he had received the shock of an overcharged battery. The spoon dropped from his hand, and his hand dropped upon his coffee-cup, and upset it. He had heard the voice of Jerry Clink in another part of the room!