'I am glad you have come at this moment,' he said, as we walked out of the alley. 'You see those two men before us? One is Tom Beadle, and the other is the Delegate who roused Jimmy so strangely to-night.'
'They are not walking together; they do not seem to be acquainted.'
'No; but supposing this one to be an Apostle of Liberty, and that one a thief, it is well that they should be strangers.'
Their destination, however, was the same. They both paused before the door of The True Briton's Delight, and both entered the building, which was a triumph of architecture, with its gay decorations and pillars. The light that came from this bad palace was dazzling.
'A bright coffin,' observed Robert Truefit, 'for virtue and morality.'
Jimmy Virtue was leaning against one of the lamp-posts opposite the public-house, smoking his pipe.
'I've been thinkin', Bob,' he said, with reflective puffs, 'as I've been standin' watchin' the people go in and out, that this 'ere free and 'lightened country of our'n's crammed full o' Temples o' Liberty.'
'Crammed full of them!' exclaimed Robert Truefit, humouring his friend. 'Why, what kind of places, Jimmy?'
Jimmy Virtue extended his pipe in the direction of the True Briton's Delight.
'Them kind o' places,' he said.