But I believe it suits
the book, which gets on pretty fast. This afternoon I went up
Lansdowne and right on past the Grand Stand to Prospect Stile, which
is at the edge of a high bit of tableland, and looks over a splendid
stretch of country, with the Bristol Channel and the Welsh hills in
the distance. While I was there the sun most considerately set in
gorgeous array. You never saw anything like it. It was worth the
journey from London to Bath, I can assure you. Tell Magnay, and may
it lure him down; also name the model aforementioned.
"How is the old Q.C. and his pretty grandchild? That quaint old
room of theirs in the Temple somehow took my fancy, and the child
was divine. Do you remember my showing you, in a gloomy narrow
street here, a jolly old watchmaker who sits in his shop-window and
is for ever bending over sick clocks and watches? Well, he's still
sitting there, as if he had never moved since we saw him that
Saturday months ago. I mean to study him for a portrait; his
sallow, clean-shaved, wrinkled face has a whole story in it. I
believe he is married to a Xantippe who throws cold water over him,
both literally and metaphorically; but he is a philosopher--I'll
stake my reputation as an observer on that--he just shrugs his
sturdy old shoulders, and goes on mending clocks and watches.
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