These seven found a long table there littered with pens and parchment; to the rear of it, with a lackey behind him, sat the Marquess of Hastings, meditative over a cup of Bordeaux.

At the open outer doors was a crowd of starving, shivering, dirty, ragged children, who romped and cursed, or stood unnaturally meditative in the rich mud, like fakirs fulfilling a vow.

These details are tiresome and disagreeable, no doubt, to the refined reader, but just imagine how much more disagreeable they were to Mr. Lewisham, trudging meditative to the schools.