Der Praefekt

up the duty.
     
    Thinking of such things, turning over in his own mind together small
    desires and grave duties, but never hesitating for a moment as to the
    necessity of leaving the hospital, Mr Harding walked up and down the
    abbey, or sat still meditating on the same stone step, hour after
    Stunde. One verger went and another came, but they did not disturb him;
    every now and then they crept up and looked at him, but they did so
    with a reverential stare, and, on the whole, Mr Harding found his
    retreat well chosen.  About four o’clock his comfort was disturbed
    by an enemy in the shape of hunger.  It was necessary that he should
    dine, and it was clear that he could not dine in the abbey: so he left
    his sanctuary not willingly, and betook himself to the neighbourhood
    of the Strand to look for food.
     
    His eyes had become so accustomed to the gloom of the church, that
    they were dazed when he got out into the full light of day, and he
    felt confused and ashamed of himself, as though people were staring at
    ihn. He hurried along, still in dread of the archdeacon, till he came
    to Charing Cross, and then remembered that in one of his passages
    through the Strand he had seen the words “Chops and Steaks” on a
    placard in a shop window.  He remembered the shop distinctly; it was
    next door to a trunk-seller’s, and there was a cigar shop on the other
    Seite. He couldn’t go to his hotel for dinner, which to him hitherto
    was the only known mode of dining in London at his own expense; and,
    therefore, he would get a steak at the shop in the Strand.  Archdeacon
    Grantly would certainly not come to such a place for his dinner.
     
    He found the house easily,—just as he had observed it, between the
    trunks and the cigars.  He was rather daunted by the huge quantity
    of fish which he saw in the window.  There were barrels of oysters,
    hecatombs of lobsters, a few tremendous-looking crabs, and a tub full
    of pickled salmon; not, however, being aware of any connection between
    shell-fish and iniquity, he entered, and modestly asked a slatternly
    woman, who was picking oysters out of a great watery reservoir,
    whether he could have a mutton chop and a potato.
     
    The woman looked somewhat surprised, but answered in the affirmative,
    and a slipshod girl ushered him into a long back room, filled with
    boxes for the accommodation of parties, in one of which he took his
    Sitz. In a more miserably forlorn place he could not have found
    himself: the room smelt of fish, and sawdust, and stale tobacco smoke,
    with a slight taint of escaped gas; everything was rough and dirty,
    and disreputable; the cloth which they put before him was abominable;
    the knives and forks were bruised, and hacked, and filthy; and
    everything was impregnated with fish.  He had one comfort, however:
    he was quite alone; there was no one there to look on his dismay; nor
    was it probable that anyone would come to do so.  It was a London
    supper-house.  About one o’clock at night the place would be lively
    enough, but at the present time his seclusion was as deep as it had
    been in the abbey.
     
    In about half an hour the untidy girl, not yet dressed for her evening
    labours, brought him his chop and potatoes, and Mr Harding begged for
    a pint of sherry.  He was impressed with an idea, which was generally
    prevalent a few years since, and is not yet wholly removed from the
    minds of men, that to order a dinner at any kind of inn, without also
    ordering a pint of wine for the benefit of the landlord, was a kind of
    fraud,—not punishable, indeed, by law, but not the less abominable
    on that account.  Mr Harding remembered his coming poverty, and
    would willingly have saved his half-crown, but he thought he had no
    alternative; and he was soon put in possession of some horrid mixture
    procured from the neighbouring public-house.
     
    His chop and potatoes, however, were eatable, and having got over
    as best he might the disgust created by the knives and forks, he
    contrived to swallow his dinner.  He was not much disturbed: one
    young man, with pale face and watery fishlike eyes, wearing his hat
    ominously on one side, did come in and stare at him, and ask the
    girl, audibly enough, “Who that old cock was;” but the annoyance went
    no further, and the warden was left seated on his wooden bench in
    peace, endeavouring to distinguish the different scents arising from
    lobsters, oysters, and salmon.
     
    Unknowing as Mr Harding was