MY SECRET LIFE
much confidence; these three were in fact in charge of the premises, although nominally the keyes were given up to my friend whom we will call Henry. The old man wished his son to be happy, allowed friends to visit him, there was good wine, put out by the old man in small quantities from time to time, good food, good attendance, and all to make things comfortable; but the old man resolutely forbade his son to be out later than eleven o’clock, and kept him as my mother kept me, almost without money. I expect that the old servants were told to keep an eye on the doings of Henry.
The basement was used as store-room for muskets, put into wooden boxes which stood in long rows upon each other like coffins. It was a large place and origin- ally only went under the factory, but the old gentleman gradually as he acquired the adjacent houses, let them, but retained most of the basements, so that his stores ran not only under the premises he occupied, but large- ly under half a dozen other houses of which he only let the shops and upper portions. On four sides this large basement had glimpses of light let into it, by gratings in the footways of the streets.
At one end and on the principal street ‘was a row of windows, beneath what was then a first class linen- draper’s shop—first class I mean for the East-End—a large place for those days, and always full. Women used to stand by dozens at a time, looking into the shop windows which were of large plate-glass—a great novelty in those days—people waiting for omnibusses used also to stand up against the shop.
Henry and I were old school friends, I had seen and felt his cock, he mine; I had not been with him an
hour before he said, “When the workmen go to dinner,
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