We have slummed together in Clerkenwell, Smithfield, Cow Cross,
Petticoat Lane, Ratcliffe Highway, and the East India and West
India docks.
She has been with me to penny gaffs and music-halls; to Greenwich Fair, and Cremorne and Rosherville gardens—and liked them all. She knew Pentonville as well as I do; and my old lodgings there, where we have both leaned over my former shoulder as I read or drew. It was she who rescued from oblivion my little prophetic song about "The Chime," which I had quite forgotten. She has been to Mr. Lintot's parties, and found them most amusing—especially Mr. Lintot.
And going further back into the past, she has roamed with me all over Paris, and climbed with me the towers of Notre Dame, and looked in vain for the mystic word [Greek: Anagkae]!
But I had also better things to show, untravelled as I was.
She had never seen Hampstead Heath, which I knew by heart; and Hampstead Heath at any time, but especially on a sunny morning in late October, is not to be disdained by any one.
Half the leaves have fallen, so that one can see the fading glory of those that remain; yellow and brown and pale and hectic red, shining like golden guineas and bright copper coins against the rich, dark, business-like green of the trees that mean to flourish all the winter through, like the tall slanting pines near the Spaniards, and the old cedar-trees, and hedges of yew and holly, for which the Hampstead gardens are famous.
Before us lies a sea of fern, gone a russet-brown from decay, in which are isles of dark green gorse, and little trees with little scarlet and orange and lemon-colored leaflets fluttering down, and running after each other on the bright grass, under the brisk west wind which makes the willows rustle, and turn up the whites of their leaves in pious resignation to the coming change.
Harrow-on-the-Hill, with its pointed spire, rises blue in the distance; and distant ridges, like receding waves, rise into blueness, one after the other, out of the low-lying mist; the last ridge bluely melting into space. In the midst of it all gleams the Welsh Harp Lake, like a piece of sky that has become unstuck and tumbled into the landscape with its shiny side up.
On the other side, all London, with nothing but the gilded cross of St. Paul's on a level with the eye; it lies at our feet, as Paris used to do from the heights of Passy, a sight to make true dreamers gaze and think and dream the more; and there we sit thinking and dreaming and gazing our fill, hand in hand, our spirits rushing together.
Once as we sat we heard the clatter of hoofs behind us, and there was a troop of my old regiment out exercising. Invisible to all but ourselves, and each other, we watched the wanton troopers riding by on their meek black chargers.