The Argosy — page 295: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

276 ONLY A YEAR OR TWO AGO. A DENSE, dark, wet fog hung over the City of London. It was a bitterly-cold morning in a bitter winter. Omnibuses were surmounted by a sea of umbrellas; not a place inside was to be had. Cabs drove down the streets, conveying well-to-do merchants to their place of business ; foot passengers, for it is not everybody who has the money to ride, hurried along the pavements, looking depressed and dismal. This mass of people, city men, were all on their way to begin their daily work. Anything more discomforting than the pilgrimage through the streets on a dark and wretched winter’s morning, when day has hardly begun, cannot well be pictured by those who are not familiar with it ; and those who are can only get reconciled to its agreeable enjoy- ment by dint of use, and of good health and strength. One slight, slim young fellow, looking as if a sharp gust of wind might blow him away, shivering as if the cold wet fog were penetrating right into him through his worn great coat, bore onwards steadily. He was a nice-looking young man, twenty years old, or so, with a sensitive face, which had “gentleman” plainly written on it, sad dark eyes, and soft brown hair. ‘Turning down one of the streets leading out of Cheapside, he soon passed into a large building, the extensive business premises of a rich and flourishing firm of warehousemen, Messrs. Coingold and Co. The work of this young fellow lay at present in a room that had to be lighted artificially. Whether the sun might shine outside, or the rain might rain, or the fog choke all light from the atmosphere, this spacious lower room must have gas burning init by night and by day. gre arin it had acquired a sort of stuffy, not to say unwholesome : harmless enough, no doubt, to sound lungs, but not so much SO er weak ones. The young man had put off his overcoat, and was sitting down to a desk, when a voice of authority lifted itself * You are late again, Mr. Lavender.” “Yes, sir, a little. It 1s so very bad a morning, that I waited, hoping to get a place in an omnibus; but it turned out to be of no use, and rather hindered me. I shall soon catch it up, Mr. Brown,” he added cheerfully. ‘ Omnibuses all full to-day, I expect,” returned Mr. Brown. “ It’s detestable weather.” “And we have had a good spell of it now,” remarked young Lavender, settling to his work. Mr. Brown, head man in that dark department, was not hard- hearted, and refrained from reminding Charles Lavender that he had latterly been more often late than early, though he used to be the eomicbooks.eo