Do you follow?
You are waiting for me to start my story. Perhaps I was waiting, then. But my story had already started—I was only like you, and didn''t know it.@思@兔@網@文@檔@共@享@與@在@線@閱@讀@
This is when I thought it really began.
A night in winter, a few weeks after the Christmas that marked my seventeenth birthday. A dark night—a hard night, full of a fog that was more or less a rain, and a rain that was more or less snow. Dark nights are good to thieves and fencing-men; dark nights in winter are the best nights of all, for then regular people keep close to their homes, and the swells all keep to the country, and the grand houses of London are shut up and empty and pleading to be cracked. We got lots of stuff on nights like those, and Mr Ibbs''s profits were higher than ever. The cold makes thieves come to a bargain very quick.
We did not feel the cold too much at Lant Street, for besides our ordinary kitchen fire there was Mr Ibbs''s locksmith''s brazier: he always kept a flame beneath the coals of it, you could never