Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. dick’s Fling. It was a dull home, that of Mr. Strahan’s. No marvel that the sailor’s face had not brightened at the prospect of returning to it. He shivered as he entered, and the shadows in the place submerged and depressed him. The street door had been left ajar whilst Mr. Strahan, senior, had gone
round the corner for his evening glass, and James pushed it open and entered the room unchallenged and unwelcomed. He had written to say that it was likely he should return that evening, and there was his letter, screwed into a pipe- light and half-burnt, lying in the empty grate. It was a house haunted by neglect?a drunkard’s home, where the dust lay thick, and everything was in its wrong place?where the furniture was broken, the little looking-glass over the mantelpiece a wreck, the china figures all headless, and a chair, over which the owner had fallen last night, still lying on its side on a threadbare hearth-rug which was scuffled into a heap in one corner of the room. James Strahan put down his parcels, and his parrot, and looked round him. He walked into the back room; he went up a flight of dirty stairs and inspected the apartments above. He descended into the front parlour again, picked up the prostrate chair and sat down, with an ugly frown puckering his forehead, and his big brown hand clenched upon the table. It was not a pleasant welcome home, and he did not look pleasantly before him?or like a hero now. I won’t forgive the old man, he muttered;
he might have kept at home for one day. I will never forgive him this, and here the brown hand came down on the deal table like a sledge hammer. He thought next that he would light a candle, but there was no candle to be found?only an empty candlestick with heavy lengths of grease hanging from…