By that time he had dismissed
the last details of business in relation to the flat, and was
free to go back to the obscure world whence he had risen. He felt
that for two years and a half he had been a pretender. It was not
natural to him to live in the manner of people who enjoy an
assured income; he belonged to the class of casual wage-earners.
Back to obscurity!
Carrying a bag which contained a few things best kept in his own
care, he went by train to King's Cross, and thence walked up
Pentonville Hill to Upper Street and his own little by-way.
Manville Street was not unreasonably squalid; the house in which
he had found a home was not alarming in its appearance, and the
woman who kept it had an honest face. Amy would have shrunk in
apprehension, but to one who had experience of London garrets
this was a rather favourable specimen of its kind. The door
closed more satisfactorily than poor Biffen's, for instance, and
there were not many of those knot-holes in the floor which gave
admission to piercing little draughts; not a pane of the window
was cracked, not one.
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