‘Yes, much, and gayer a great deal.’
‘Ah then, your experience is something like my own. We are all alike. As soon as Adam and Eve had eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil they ceased to be happy. I don’t believe there is such a thing as happiness in the world. I was so wretched that I crept in yon den for warmth and shelter, and out of curiosity to see if that sort of thing was happiness.’
‘And what did you think?’
‘Why, that a costermonger’s wife has a happier lot.’
‘“Foolish soul,”’ continued Wentworth, ‘“what Act of Legislature was there that thou shouldst be happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all. What if thou wert born and predestined not to be happy, but to be unhappy?”’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Rose. ‘You did not speak to the people in that way at Sloville.’
‘Ah, no! I had not read my Carlyle then. I am quoting you out of “Sartor Resartus.” Behold in me a philosopher.’
‘Well,’ said Rose, with a smile, ‘I can’t say the sight is particularly brilliant or overpowering.’
Just at that moment up comes the policeman—the London policeman, whose chief occupation seems to be to watch men and women when they stop in the streets for a talk, and to keep out of the way when he is wanted to prop up the inebriate, or to lay hold of a pickpocket, or a burglar, or a rough.