The long summer twilight was just expiring, the pale shadows
of the moon were just stealing on; the gas was beginning to
glare in the shops of tripe and bacon, and the paper lanthorns
to adorn the stall and the stand. They crossed a broad street
which seemed the metropolis of the district; it flamed with
gin-palaces; a multitude were sauntering in the mild though
tainted air; bargaining, blaspheming, drinking, wrangling: and
varying their business and their potations, their fierce
strife and their impious irreverence, with flashes of rich
humour, gleams of native wit, and racy phrases of idiomatic
slang.
Absorbed in her great mission Sybil was almost insensible to
the scenes through which she passed, and her innocence was
thus spared many a sight and sound that might have startled
her vision or alarmed her ear. They could not now he very
distant from the spot; they were crossing this broad way, and
then were about to enter another series of small obscure dingy
streets, when the cab-driver giving a flank to his steed to
stimulate it to a last effort, the horse sprang forward, and
the wheel of the cab came off.
Sybil extricated herself from the vehicle unhurt; a group
immediately formed round the cab, a knot of young thieves,
almost young enough for infant schools, a dustman, a woman
nearly naked and very drunk, and two unshorn ruffians with
brutality stamped on every feature, with pipes in their
mouths, and their hands in their pockets.
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