When you look at them they slap their trouser pockets. When they look
at you they are wondering if you know how much they are worth. Tommy,
one day, roaming their streets (in which he was worth incredibly
little), and thinking sadly of what could never be, saw the modest
little garnet ring in a jeweller's window, and attached to it was a
pathetic story. No other person could have seen the story, but it was
as plain to him as though it had been beautifully written on the tag
of paper which really contained the price. With his hand on the door
he paused, overcome by that horror of entering shops without a lady to
do the talking, which all men of genius feel (it is the one sure
test), hurried away, came back, went to and fro shyly, until he saw
that he was yielding once more to the indecision he thought he had so
completely mastered, whereupon he entered bravely (though it was one
of those detestable doors that ring a bell as they open), and sternly
ordered the jeweller, who could have bought and sold our Tommy with
one slap on the trouser leg, to hand the ring over to him.
He had no intention of giving it to Grizel. That, indeed, was part of
its great tragedy, for this is the story Tommy read into the ring:
There was once a sorrowful man of twenty-three, and forty, and sixty.
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