The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, page 49 by Cuthbert Bede
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nd looked fixedly at nothing.
Mr. Green, however, refraining from observations, paid the bill; and, muffling himself in greatcoat and travelling-cap, he prepared himself to take a comfortable journey back to Warwickshire, inside the Birmingham and Oxford coach. It was not loaded in the same way that it had been when he came up by it, and his fellow-passengers were of a very different description; and it must be confessed that, in the absence of Mr. Bouncer's tin horn, the attacks of intrusive terriers, and the involuntary fumigation of himself with tobacco (although its presence was still perceptible within the coach), Mr. Green found his journey ~from~ Oxford much more agreeable than it had been ~to~ that place. He took an affectionate farewell of his son, somewhat after the manner of the "heavy fathers" of the stage; and then the coach bore him away from the last lingering look of our hero, who felt any thing but heroic <VG048.JPG> at being left for the first time in his life to shift for himself. His luggage had been sent up to Brazenface, so thither he turned his steps, and with some little difficulty found his room. Mr. Filcher had partly unpacked his master's things, and had left everything uncomfortable and in "the most admired disorder"; and Mr. Verdant Green sat himself down upon the "practicable" window-seat, and resigned himself to his thoughts. If they had not already flown to the Manor Green, they would soon have been carried there; for a German band, just outside the college-gates, began to play "Home, sweet home," with that truth and delicacy of expression which the wandering minstrels of Germany seem to acquire intuitively. The sweet melancholy
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of the simple air, as it came subdued by distance into softer tones, would have powerfully affected most people who had just been torn from the bosom of their homes, to fight, all inexperienced, the battle of life; but it had such an effect on Mr. Verdant Green, that - but it little matters saying ~wh