Whether this was not a wild proceeding, after all; how Mr.
Grewgious might regard it; whether she should find him at the
journey's end; how she would act if he were absent; what might
become of her, alone, in a place so strange and crowded; how if she
had but waited and taken counsel first; whether, if she could now
go back, she would not do it thankfully; a multitude of such uneasy
speculations disturbed her, more and more as they accumulated. At
length the train came into London over the housetops; and down
below lay the gritty streets with their yet un-needed lamps a-glow,
on a hot, light, summer night.
'Hiram Grewgious, Esquire, Staple Inn, London.' This was all Rosa
knew of her destination; but it was enough to send her rattling
away again in a cab, through deserts of gritty streets, where many
people crowded at the corner of courts and byways to get some air,
and where many other people walked with a miserably monotonous
noise of shuffling of feet on hot paving-stones, and where all the
people and all their surroundings were so gritty and so shabby!
There was music playing here and there, but it did not enliven the
case. No barrel-organ mended the matter, and no big drum beat dull
care away. Like the chapel bells that were also going here and
there, they only seemed to evoke echoes from brick surfaces, and
dust from everything. As to the flat wind-instruments, they seemed
to have cracked their hearts and souls in pining for the country.
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