And now he lay on the pavement, stiff and cold, a babe
that had cried itself to sleep because it could not understand,
silent until the morning.
Fate And The Artist
The workmen's dwellings stood in the northwest of London, in
quaint rivalry with the comfortable ugliness of the Maida Vale blocks
of flats. They were fairly new and very well built, with wide stone
staircases that echoed all day to the impatient footsteps of children,
and with a flat roof that served at once as a playground for them and
a drying-ground for their mothers' washing. In hot weather it was
pleasant enough to play hide-and-seek or follow-my-leader up and down
the long alleys of cool white linen, and if a sudden gust of wind or
some unexpected turn of the game set the wet sheets flapping in the
children's faces, their senses were rather tickled than annoyed.
To George, mooning in a corner of the railings that seemed to keep all
London in a cage, these games were hardly more important than the
shoutings and whistlings that rose from the street below. It seemed to
him that all his life--he had lived eleven years--he had been standing
in a corner watching other people engaging in meaningless ploys and
antics. The sun was hot, and yet the children ran about and made
themselves hotter, and he wondered, as when he had been in bed with
one of his frequent illnesses he had wondered at the grown-up folk who
came and went, moving their arms and legs and speaking with their
mouths, when it was possible to lie still and quiet and feel the
moments ticking themselves off in one's forehead.
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