She felt very pensive, as bent a lady who had just taken clandestine leave of her home. No more would Barbary know London, that great city of gin shops and great mansions; where the Thames had turned that spring into Freezeland Street, lined with booths and crowded with bakers and barbers and butchers, hawkers of ballads and oysters and brandy-balls; where Chinese pagodas and embattled Gothic castles appeared in the parks, and the Prince Regent hosted great fetes at Carlton House and alternately shot at chimney pots. London, where Lord Grafton’s pocket watch remained, well-inlaid in lavender, much to the advantage of the owner of the pawn shop, who, like others of his calling, was quick to recognize a havey-cavey business when it came his way. Still, enough had been realized from the exchange to enable Barbary to join the countless other English debtors who had taken refuge across the Channel, a custom grievously interfered with by that Serpent of Corsica, Napoleon. Beside her at the rail stood Tibble.
