She informed me that her name was Cissy, and that her father's shop was in Three Colt Street. I informed her that my name was Paul, and that my father was a lawyer. I also pointed out to her that a lawyer is much superior in social position to a shopkeeper, which she acknowledged cheerfully. We parted at the corner of the Stainsby Road, and I let her kiss me once. It was understood that in the Stainsby Road we might meet again.
I left Eliza gaping after me, the front door in her hand, and ran straight up into my own room. Robinson Crusoe, King Arthur, The Last of the Barons, Rob Roy! I looked them all in the face and was not ashamed. I also was a gentleman.
My mother was much troubled when she saw me, but my father, hearing the story, approved.
“But he looks so awful,” said my mother. “In this world,” said my father, “one must occasionally be aggressive—if necessary, brutal.”
My father would at times be quite savage in his sentiments.
Chapter IV.
Paul, falling in with a Goodly Company of Pilgrims, learns of them the Road that he must Travel, and Meets the Princess of the Golden Locks.
The East India Dock Road is nowadays a busy, crowded thoroughfare. The jingle of the tram-bell and the rattle of the omnibus and cart mingle continuously with the rain of many feet, beating ceaselessly upon its pavements. But at the time of which I write it was an empty, voiceless way, bounded on the one side by the long, echoing wall of the docks and on the other by occasional small houses isolated amid market gardens, drying grounds and rubbish heaps. Only one thing remains—or did remain last time I passed along it, connecting it with its former self—and that is the one-storeyed brick cottage at the commencement of the bridge, and which was formerly the toll-house. I remember this toll-house so well because it was there that my childhood fell from me, and sad and frightened I saw the world beyond.
I cannot explain it better. I had been that afternoon to Plaistow on a visit to the family dentist. It was an out-of-the-way place in which to keep him, but there existed advantages of a counterbalancing nature.
“Have the half-crown in your hand,” my mother would direct me, while making herself sure that the purse containing it was safe at the bottom of my knickerbocker pocket; “but of course if he won't take it, why, you must bring it home again.”