For three days he had lived upon ninepence. Threepence a day for food. Think of that, ye who are fed regularly, and fed well. Threepence, to satisfy all the cravings of an excellent appetite! There was now no more money left. And in two days more the week's rent would be due.
On the morning when he came forth, hungry and miserable, without even the penny for a loaf, it happened that Angela was standing at her upper window, on the other side of the Green, and, fortunately for the unlucky scholar that she saw him. His strange behavior made her watch him. First he looked up and down the street in uncertainty; then, as if he had business which could not be delayed a moment, he turned to the right and marched straight away toward the Mile End Road. This was because he thought he would go to the Head of the Egyptian Department at the British Museum and borrow five shillings. Then he stopped suddenly: this was because he remembered that he would have to send in his name, and that the chief would certainly refuse to see him. Then he turned slowly and walked, dragging his limbs and hanging his head in the opposite direction--because he was resolved to make for the London Docks, and drop accidentally into the sluggish green water, the first drop of which kills almost as certainly as a glass of Bourbon whiskey. Then he thought that there would be some luxury in sitting down for a few moments to think comfortably over his approaching demise, and of the noise it would make in the learned world, and how remorseful and ashamed the scholars--especially he of the Egyptian Department--would feel for the short balance of their sin-laden days, and he took a seat on a bench in the green-garden with this view. As he thought he leaned forward, staring into vacancy, and in his face there grew so dark an expression of despair and terror that Angela shuddered and ran for her hat, recollecting that she had heard of his poverty and disappointments.
"I am afraid you are not well, Mr. Fagg."
He started and looked up. In imagination he was already lying dead at the bottom of the green-water, and before his troubled mind there were floating confused images of his former life, now past and dead and gone. He saw himself in his Australian cottage arriving at his grand discovery; he was lecturing about it on a platform; he was standing on the deck of a ship, drinking farewell nobblers with an enthusiastic crowd; and he was wandering hungry, neglected, despised, about the stony streets of London.