The chief comfort I had was that Miss Woolmer liked him and opened
her house to him. She was one of the large-hearted women who can see
the good through the evil, and was interested by contact with all
phases of thought; and, moreover, the lad should not be lost for want
of the entree to something like a home, because the upper crust of
Mycening considered him as "only Dr. Kingston's partner," and the
Kingstons themselves had the sort of sense that he was too much for
them which makes a spider dislike to have a bluebottle in his web.
She was interested, too, rather sadly in the crusade without the
cross that the two young men were trying to undertake against the
wretchedness of those potters.
It was much in their favour that the landlord, who was also the owner
of the "Dragon's Head," was invited to join a brother in America
without loss of time, and was ready to sell and give immediate
possession; so that Harry actually owned it in a fortnight from first
hearing of the offer, having, of course, given a heavy price for it.
The evening it came into his possession he went down, and, standing
at the door, tried to explain why he had closed it, and why he could
not bear to see its frequenters spending their wages on degrading
themselves and making their homes miserable. In no mood for a
temperance harangue, the men drowned, or would have drowned aught but
his short incisive sentences, in clamours for their beer, and one big
bully pushed forward to attack him.
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