I allas remember tunes, but I never could
make out anything of the words.'
D'Arcy laughed at my eccentricity in running after the boy to learn
where he had got a tune. But I did not tell him why.
After we had passed some way down Ratcliffe Highway, D'Arcy said,
'Here we are then,' and pointed to a shop, or rather two shops, on
the opposite side of the street. One window was filled with caged
birds; the other with specimens of beautiful Oriental pottery and
grotesque curiosities in the shape of Chinese and Japanese statues
and carvings.
My brain still rang with the air I had heard the river-boy whistling,
but I felt that I must talk about something.
'It is here that you buy your wonderful curiosities and porcelain!' I
said.
'Partly; but there is not a curiosity shop in London that I have not
ransacked in my time.'
The shop we now entered reminded me of that Raxton Fair which was so
much associated with Winnie. Its chief attraction was the advent of
Wombwell's menagerie. From the first moment that the couriers of that
august establishment came to paste their enormous placards on the
walls, down to the sad morning when the caravans left the
market-place, Winnie and I and Rhona Boswell had talked 'Wombwell.
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