“Did you do a foolish thing then, uncle?” asked Harry, demurely.
“I did, as you will see; for I fell in love again.”
“I don’t see anything so very foolish in that.”
“I have repented it since, though. Don’t interrupt me again, please. In the middle of October, then, in the year 1820, in the evening, I was walking across Russell Square, on my way home from the British Museum, where I had been reading all day. You see I have a full intention of being precise, Janet.”
“I’m sure I don’t know why you make the remark to me, uncle,” said Janet, with an involuntary toss of her head. Her uncle only went on with his narrative.
“I begin at the very beginning of my story,” he said; “for I want to be particular as to everything that can appear to have had anything to do with what came afterwards. I had been reading, I say, all the morning in the British Museum; and, as I walked, I took off my spectacles to ease my eyes. I need not tell you that I am shortsighted now, for that you know well enough. But I must tell you that I was shortsighted then, and helpless enough without my spectacles, although I was not quite so much so as I am now;—for I find it all nonsense about shortsighted eyes improving with age. Well, I was walking along the south side of Russell Square, with my spectacles in my hand, and feeling a little bewildered in consequence—for it was quite the dusk of the evening, and shortsighted people require more light than others. I was feeling, in fact, almost blind. I had got more than halfway to the other side, when, from the crossing that cuts off the corner in the direction of Montagu Place, just as I was