I was homesick for the Broads, where everybody,
even bad men, like the worst of the smugglers, was friendly to
me. I hated all this noisy city, so full of dirty jumbled houses.
I longed to be in my coracle on the Waveney, paddling along among
the reeds, chucking pebbles at the water-rats. But when I went
out into the garden I found that even London held something for
me, not so good as the Broads, perhaps, but pleasant in its way.
Now before I go further, I must tell you that my uncle's house
was one of the old houses in Billingsgate. It stood in a narrow,
crowded lane, at the western end of Thames Street, close to the
river. Few of the houses thereabouts were old; for the fire of
London had nearly destroyed that part of the city, but my uncle's
house, with a few more in the same lane, being built of brick,
had escaped. The bricks of some of the houses were scorched
black. I remember, also, at the corner house, three doors from my
uncle's house, the melted end of a water pipe, hanging from the
roof like a long leaden icicle, just as it had run from the heat
eighteen years before. I used to long for that icicle: it would
have made such fine bullets for my sling. I have said that Fish
Lane, where my uncle lived, was narrow. It was very narrow. The
upper stories of the houses opposite could be touched from my
bed-room window with an eight-foot fishing rod. If one leaned
well out, one could see right into their upper rooms. You could
even hear the people talking in them.
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