The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. Murphy sat out of it, as though he were free, in a mew in West Brompton. Here for what might have been six months he had eaten, drunk, slept, and put his clothes on and off, in a medium-sized cage of northwestern aspect commanding an unbroken view of medium-sized cages of south-eastern aspect.
Soon, he would have to make other arrangements, for the mew had been condemned. Soon, he would have to buckle to and start eating, drinking, sleeping, and putting his clothes on and off, in quite alien surroundings.
He sat naked in his rocking-chair of undressed teak, guaranteed not to crack, warp, shrink, corrode or creak at night. It was his own, it never left him. The corner in which he sat was curtained off from the sun, the poor old sun in the Virgin again for the billionth time….
…Somewhere a cuckoo-clock, having struck between twenty and thirty, became the echo of a street-cry, which now entering the mew gave Quid pro quo! Quid pro quo! directly.
