And then I know I couldn't live without this"-- and he waved his hand towards the City of London, which wore, at this moment, the appearance of a town cut out of gray-blue cardboard, and pasted flat against the sky, which was of a deeper blue.
"There are one or two people I'm fond of, and there's a little good music, and a few pictures, now and then--just enough to keep one dangling about here.

Ah, but I couldn't live with savages! Are you fond of books?
Music?
Pictures?
D'you care at all for first editions?
I've got a few nice things up here, things I pick up cheap, for I can't afford to give what they ask." They had reached a small court of high eighteenth-century houses, in one of which Rodney had his rooms.

They climbed a very steep staircase, through whose uncurtained windows the moonlight fell, illuminating the banisters with their twisted pillars, and the piles of plates set on the window-sills, and jars half-full of milk.

Rodney's rooms were small, but the sitting-room window looked out into a courtyard, with its flagged pavement, and its single tree, and across to the flat red-brick fronts of the opposite houses, which would not have surprised Dr.Johnson, if he had come out of his grave for a turn in the moonlight.

Rodney lit his lamp, pulled his curtains, offered Denham a chair, and, flinging the manuscript of his paper on the Elizabethan use of Metaphor on to the table, exclaimed: "Oh dear me, what a waste of time! But it's over now, and so we may think no more about it." He then busied himself very dexterously in lighting a fire, producing glasses, whisky, a cake, and cups and saucers.