Hackness sincerely hoped not. Cynthia Grimfern came out to meet them. A liberal application of soap and water had rendered her sweet and fair, but it was impossible to keep clean for long. Everywhere lay evidences of the fog.
"It\'s lovely to be able to see and breathe once more," she said. "Last night every moment I felt as if I must be suffocated. To-day it is like suddenly finding Paradise."
"A sooty paradise," Grimfern growled.
Cynthia laughed a little hopelessly.
"It\'s dreadful," she said. "I have had no table-cloth laid, it is useless. But the table itself is clean, and that is something. I don\'t think London will ever be perfectly clean again."
The reek was still upon the great city, the taint of it hung upon the air. By one o\'clock it had ceased raining and the sky cleared. A startled sun looked down on strange things. There was a curious thickness about the trees in Regent\'s Park, they were as black as if they had been painted. The pavements were greasy and dangerous to pedestrians in a hurry.
There was a certain jubilation still to be observed, but the black melancholy desolation was bound to depress the most exuberant spirits. For the last three days everything had been at a standstill.
In the thickly populated districts the mortality amongst little children had been alarmingly high. Those who had any tendency to lung or throat or chest troubles died like flies before the first breath of frost. The evening papers, coming out as usual, a little late in the day, had many a gruesome story to tell. It was the harvest of the scare-line journalist, and he lost no chance. He scented his gloomy copy and tracked it down unerringly.
Over two thousand children—to say nothing of elderly people—had died in the East End. The very small infants had had no chance at all.
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