The next day being Sunday, Mr Headstone was at liberty to do as he pleased, and nothing pleased him more than to stay abed until noon - particularly on a morning when the windows were starred with frost and the air was so cold and sharp that the footsteps of passing churchgoers sounded as if they were in the room itself. By the gradual exposure of his nose and chin to the reviving properties of the circulating drafts of cool air admitted through the chinks and crannies in the walls, Mr Headstone eventually achieved a state of consciousness, and, with his senses recalled to him, became acutely aware of the need for some breakfast.
Wrapping himself in a blanket, the pedagogue swept away the ashes in the grate, rekindled the fire and set a frying pan on a trivet over the flames. Into this implement - much blackened from use - he tossed a string of pork sausages and some raw onions. His endeavours to prevent the contents of the pan from burning with the aid of a toasting fork were hindered by the necessity of preparing at the same time a saucepan of coffee and some hot buttered rolls; and so, when the sausages were eventually turned out onto a platter, they were in texture not unlike the consistency of coal, and of a similar colour, too.
After breakfast Mr Headstone sat himself down at his writing desk and opened the calfskin notebook in which he intended to preserve his observations on the work of Mr Dickens. The startling blankness of the first page - as white as the snow on the rooftops outside his window - might have been a reflection of the pedagogue's own mind; for, faced with the prospect of committing his opinions to ink, he now discovered that he did not seem to possess any.
In search of inspiration, he got up and paced the room as if he might find a quantity of the stuff under the carpet or propped up on the mantelpiece. He returned to his desk and took an inventory of the stationery items, and, becoming curious regarding the operation of the mechanical pencil, devoted a period of three quarters of an hour to an investigation of the workings of said instrument. He placed another saucepan of coffee on the trivet and decided to order in a shilling's worth of crumpets; crumpets being not only wholesome, cheap and very filling at the price, but also, when liberally buttered, likely to contain properties capable of promoting the imagination.
Mr Charles Dickens
