O Absalom! [antikvár]

And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and Wept: and as he went thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son AbsalomI Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son! PART ONE CHAPTER ONE i liked fetching the washing from the moscrops', and my mother liked washing for Mrs. Moscrop better than for anybody else. That was because Mrs. Moscrop always wrapped a bar of yellow soap in with the washing. There wasn't anyone else who thought of a thing like that. The Moscrops' shop stood on a corner. The frontage was on the main road. To reach the bakehouse at the back you went down the side-street. The shop-window looked very gay that night, especially as the streets were full of writhing yellow fog. It was a few days ofT Christmas. Chinese lanterns, some in long concertina shapes, some spherical, all lit with candles, reinforced the two gas-jets which normally lighted the window. There was a long brass tube running the length of the window with half a dozen gas-points sprouting from it like nipples, but only one at either end was ever lit. I suppose the Moscrops, like the rest of us in Hulme, had to think of pennies. But that idea didn't occur to me then. Moscrops' was an oasis of light in the dingy slum, a lounging-place and rendezvous of the boys and girls, and on that particular night, with holly stuck into the tops of cakes, with coloured paper chains dangling in loops from one Chinese lantern to another, with 'A Merry Christmas' hanging in separate silver letters from a string that was itself sparkling as though with hoar-frost, Moscrops' looked as enchanting a window as a child could wish. There were loaves covered with crisp brown crust, buns oozing currants, Christmas-puddings, cloth-covered, in basins, tall jars of biscuits, and bottles of sweets. When I pushed open the door, a bell above it gave one un-resonant sound, more of a click than a ring, and there I was with the raw night shut out, the familiar, warm, foody smell all about me. Mrs. Moscrop, squat and rounded and friendly as one of her own cottage loaves, came in from tire parlour behind the shop. 'Oh, the washing!' she said. 'It's not quite ready. Just go and talk to Mr. Moscrop in the bakehouse.'