{"product_id":"2940012382399","title":"DR. AND MRS. GOLD","description":"Scanned, proofed and corrected from the original edition for your reading pleasure. (Worth every penny!)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e***\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn excerpt from the beginning of:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER I\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe stream of life goes northward up Tottenham Court Road on summer afternoons. Five o'clock, and still more six o'clock, brings visions of tea and rest to weary men and women, boys and girls. And among the many streamlets that flow into the main current there is always one that comes from the eastward, not far from Oxford Street. By twos and threes it keeps on steadily. It is made up of women, youngish women, at this hour of the day. The men turn out of the Museum later. It keeps itself distinct from the main tide of business until far up the road. Is it the tinge of learning or of study that one distinguishes it by? Is it the faint fluttering of long thin strips of printed paper, or the occasional flourish of a lead pencil? Is it a smudge of paint on a skirt, or a trace of overflowing inkpots on an ungloved thumb? Is it the sight of hair ruffled for art's sake, or for comfort's sake during long hours of elbows on the table? Is it—ah! who can tell what it is that clings to the women students, worshippers of the written or the painted word, whereby we distinguish them from other women who tramp along that straight, unaristocratic road evening after evening all the year round; whether the sun is sinking over towards Harrow, or whether it has set long ago, or whether its slanting beams greet them and bathe them in light and love as they turn the corner and mix with the throng that goes northward.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA few years ago—the date is of no consequence—one day in early summer, when the sun was still high behind the houses, two girls turned into the road together. I call them girls, though perhaps they were already women in years, because they had, and especially one of them had, a frail, slim figure, and a habit of giving way to all comers that does not last through a lengthened experience of student-life in London. As they continually waited for one another they advanced but slowly; and presently they were overtaken by a third reader, who carried books and papers with a determined air, cleaving a rapid way along the crowded pavement. One of our earlier acquaintances bowed as she passed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Who's that?\" said her companion. \"I didn't know you knew her. I've often seen her about this last year, and wondered who she was.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"George Thompson told me about her. I know her a little. Her name's Clara David. They say her father died in Siberia. The Gilman-Turners picked her up somewhere, and have her to their house. They always have queer people. Mrs. Gilman-Turner says it makes her parties go off, and Ada Gilman-Turner told me that she's revolutionary and a red republican—this Clara David, I mean—and that she's writing for the papers to earn bread and cheese.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"She's clever, I suppose,\" said the younger girl. \"She's a queer-looking mortal; and how she covers the ground! I don't think I want to know her. I should be afraid she'd explode under my eyes.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"She has exploded pretty often, I expect. I don't know how George Thompson came to be sent for, but he was sent for to see her mother, when the two first came over here together. She was ill, and she's dead since—the mother, you know. And this Clara David's all alone, hasn't any belongings at all. George says she was put in prison once, in Russia or Germany or somewhere, and that she had hairbreadth escapes, and ate some papers to hide them, and that she arrived in England with no clothes and no money, and lived in a garret. But you never know if George means you to believe all he says. I don't suppose it's true. I told him he'd read it in a penny dreadful.\"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\"It doesn't sound likely,\" said the younger girl. \"Doesn't seem to fit in with Tottenham Court Road; greys and drabs do best to paint with here. You'd want plenty of scarlet and orange to bring out that story well. Besides, I shouldn't think she'd be alive to tell the tale, should you? The paper, and ink and that, would poison her, wouldn't it?\" she added, for, like many of her craft, she had a most matter-of-fact mind. \"See! here's our turn.\" And they went westward, where presently they will find the colours less dingy and dull, and the world brighter.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGoing northward the world does not soon become brighter. That there is sunshine far ahead, one knows; as indeed there is at the end of most pathways of man's making; but it needs faith to believe in it through the dreary waste of small houses and shops that stretch out in that direction. You lose the trace of students soon after the tram starts: only a few of the more plodding or enthusiastic continue to remind you of their existence by reading in the car.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eClara David did not read. She counted her money, then gazed long and earnestly over the head of a working man who...","brand":"OGB","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47180089426160,"sku":"2940012382399","price":1.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012382399_p0.jpg?v=1763568314","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012382399","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}