"No, thank you," he answered.
"Garn then. I'll snack yer for a ——y fool!"
And from the peaceableness of the reply he gathered that this time the lady was not soliciting patronage but conferring it.
He was no longer hungry, no longer weighed upon by his exhausted body. A great restlessness had seized it, a desire to walk, to walk on and on without stopping. The young day had lured him into the Regent's Park. So gentle was the weather that, but for bare branches and blanched sky, it might have been a day in Spring. As he walked he experienced sensations of indescribable delicacy and lightness, he saw ahead of him pellucid golden vistas of metaphysical splendour, he skimmed over fields of elastic air with the ease and ecstasy of a blessed spirit.
When he came in he found that the experience prolonged itself through the early night, even when he lay motionless on his bed staring at the wall. And as he stared it seemed to him that there passed upon the wall clouds upon clouds of exquisite and evanescent colour, and that strange forms appeared and moved upon the clouds. He saw a shoal of fishes (they were fishes, radiant, iridescent, gorgeous fishes, with the tails of peacocks); they swam round and round the room just under the cornice, an ever-revolving, ever-floating frieze. He was immensely interested in these decorative hallucinations. His brain seemed to be lifted up, to be iridescent also, to swim round and round with the swimming fishes.
He woke late in the morning with a violent sore throat and pain in all his body. He was too giddy to sit up and help himself, but he knocked weakly on the thin wall. His neighbour roused herself at the faint summons and appeared. She stood at the foot of the bed with her hands on her hips and contemplated him for a moment. He tried to speak, but his tongue seemed to be stuck burning to the roof of his mouth. He pointed to his throat.
"Yes, I dessay," said she. "I said you'd get somefing and you've got it." So saying she disappeared into her own apartment.
As he saw her go despair shook him. He thought that he was abandoned. But presently she returned, bringing a cup of hot tea with a dash of gin in it from her own breakfast.
"I'd a seen to you afore ef you'd let me," she said. "You tyke it from me, young man, wot you wants is a good hot lining to your belly. I'd 'ave given it to you ef you'd a let me. I'm a lydy as tykes her dinner reg'ler, I am. No, you don't—" This, as he turned away his head in protest. She however secured it firmly with one filthy hand, while with the other she held the reeking cup to his lips. She had put it to her own first to test the heat and quality of the brew. Yet he was grateful. He had some difficulty in swallowing; and from time to time she wiped his mouth with her villainous apron; and he was grateful still, having passed beyond disgust.
She perceived the gratitude. "Garn," said she, "wot's a cup er tea? I'd a seen to yer afore ef you'd a let me."