'Not at all, my dear,' said Mr. Grewgious, infinitely gratified;
'it is I who thank you for your charming confidence and for your
charming company. Your breakfast will be provided for you in a
neat, compact, and graceful little sitting-room (appropriate to
your figure), and I will come to you at ten o'clock in the morning.
I hope you don't feel very strange indeed, in this strange place.'
'O no, I feel so safe!'
'Yes, you may be sure that the stairs are fire-proof,' said Mr.
Grewgious, 'and that any outbreak of the devouring element would be
perceived and suppressed by the watchmen.'
'I did not mean that,' Rosa replied. 'I mean, I feel so safe from
him.'
'There is a stout gate of iron bars to keep him out,' said Mr.
Grewgious, smiling; 'and Furnival's is fire-proof, and specially
watched and lighted, and I live over the way!' In the stoutness of
his knight-errantry, he seemed to think the last-named protection
all sufficient. In the same spirit he said to the gate-porter as
he went out, 'If some one staying in the hotel should wish to send
across the road to me in the night, a crown will be ready for the
messenger.' In the same spirit, he walked up and down outside the
iron gate for the best part of an hour, with some solicitude;
occasionally looking in between the bars, as if he had laid a dove
in a high roost in a cage of lions, and had it on his mind that she
might tumble out.
CHAPTER XXI - A RECOGNITION
NOTHING occurred in the night to flutter the tired dove; and the
dove arose refreshed.
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